


The Price of a Soul

by enthusiasmgirl



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Class Issues, Divorce, Drug Use, F/M, Friendship, Legal Drama, Mother-Son Relationship, Private School, Rosalind Sharpe's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-04-14 11:00:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4562004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthusiasmgirl/pseuds/enthusiasmgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Foggy found out about the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, it forced him to question if he ever really knew Matt. But it also made him a hypocrite, because Matt never really knew him. Foggy was always a liar, from the moment they met. And now Foggy's mother is in town, his birth mother, and the truth is finally going to come out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Was Anything Ever Real?

**Author's Note:**

> So this is in response to a prompt on the Daredevil Kink Meme related to revealing Foggy's secret family drama with his mother. The original prompt can be found [here.](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/3230.html?thread=6179486#cmt6179486)
> 
> Also, I know that my other story Mothers touches on the same subject of Foggy's relationship with his mother. This is a bit of a more involved and features a much bitchier, different take on Rosalind that's been percolating in my head for a while.
> 
> (Apparently I can hold multiple headcanons in my brain for Foggy Nelson at the same time, and somehow none of them seem to contradict each other all that much. I've got one story where he was raised a mutant and his mutant ability is just being the world's most empathetic person. Another where he's a hero in his own right. And now, this one, where he is a secretly depressed, self-loathing reformed asshole. So yeah... whichever version of him you imagine, I probably will write it at some point.)
> 
> So please, enjoy and have all of the parental angst...

The tension was thick in the room. Foggy could hear Matt wheezing with each breath he took. He also knew for the first time that Matt could hear so much more than that.

He asked the question that he wished more than anything he didn't have to ask.

"Are you telling me that since I've known you, any time I wasn't telling the truth, you knew? And what, you just played along?" Foggy asked.

"Basically," Matt replied.

What did that mean, Foggy wondered, irritated by the vagueness of the response. There were so many lies, so many half-truths that they had both told one another over the years. So many sins of omission too. How much did Matt know, really? And if Matt did know the truth, why was he still sitting there begging Foggy to stay?

"Was anything ever real with us?" Foggy asked. He wasn't just talking about Matt.

* * *

Foggy kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, afterwards. For days as the two of them worked on taking down Fisk, long days where things were strained between them, he knew that his heart raced with anticipation every time Matt opened his mouth, just waiting for the confrontation he knew was inevitable. He knew that Matt knew too.

"Why was it a lie every time you called Anna mom, Foggy?" he imagined Matt asking.

"How could you have thrown all of the opportunities you had in life away when I struggled so much for every one I ever got?" he heard Matt say coldly in his head.

"How could you ever expect to be forgiven for what you did?" he imagined Matt demanding to know.

"Was anything ever real with us?" Imaginary Matt threw his own words bitterly back in his face. "Who are you?"

Foggy kept waiting for Matt to say it. To tell Foggy that he knew, from the moment he met him, that everything about Foggy - his name, the memories of his childhood he had shared, his entire personality - was a lie. But he never did.

Foggy wished that the fact that he never did brought him some kind of relief. But it didn't. He had spent his adult life waiting, and so that's what he kept doing. He knew he couldn't run from the truth forever.

* * *

There were still some people in his life who knew who he really was, who witnessed his transformation into a fraud, an actor. Why they stuck around Foggy would never understand, but they did, even if he always kind of wished that they wouldn't have.

His family knew. They saw him through the change, supported him through it. But they never brought it up, knew better than that. And they didn't know the whole story. They didn't know why. Some things would only disappoint them. Foggy didn't think he could take that. Not after everything he put them through.

A few people from the neighborhood remembered who he had been, all those years ago. Brett knew. It was part of why Brett still kind of hated him, still looked at him so suspiciously when he showed up with cigars for Bess or asked him for a favour. Brett expected him to eventually revert back to who he was. Foggy couldn't blame him for that.

Marci knew the most, because she had known him, really known him, for longer than anyone. Being around Marci made Foggy hate himself a lot of the time, but she was also the only one who he could be honest with who never judged him. She thought she knew the whole story, knew why Foggy decided to make the choices he made, but she didn't really. Foggy only let her think she did. He had always assumed that she would never have believed him anyway.

Matt... From the moment Foggy had met Matt, he knew that Matt could never, ever find out. If Matt knew, Matt would hate him. And if Matt hated him, Foggy's whole identity would crumble away. Because Matt believed in Foggy. So much so that when Foggy was around Matt, Foggy sometimes even allowed himself to believe that the man Matt considered his friend was real.

So Foggy could never relax. He was always waiting.

* * *

Foggy and Matt were in the middle of a long stretch of work drafting a motion in their latest case when Foggy saw Matt's entire demeanor suddenly shift. It was like watching the man suddenly see a ghost.

Foggy realized that Matt was simply hearing something he wasn't when Karen called them into the main office, urgency in her voice. She had the office's small television turned to the afternoon news.

"Fisk has hired a new defense team," Karen said. "They're giving a statement now."

The television cut to a crowd on the steps of the courthouse, and as they watched Foggy suddenly felt his heart begin to pound out of his chest. It was all he could do to get air into his lungs and remain upright as the world whited out around him and every cell in his body focused on a single thing, the stern-looking gray-haired woman speaking to the reporters gathered to hear from the accused Kingpin's new attorney. Rosalind Sharpe. His mother, the woman he had spent the last 14 years of his life trying not to think about, was defending Wilson Fisk.

Next to him, he saw Matt's head turn to stare in his direction, intensity hidden behind his glasses. This was it. This was the moment Foggy had been dreading for so long. There would be no more running from the truth.


	2. Mama's Boy

Foggy remembered the day he first met his mother incredibly clearly. It was one of his earliest memories.

Not the earliest, which is why he remembered it. Most people, he knew, didn't have that luxury. But then again, most people's mothers weren't Rosalind. Most people's mothers wouldn't hand their baby off to doctors with all the warmth of an ice sculpture and instruct them to get it away from them on first sight, which is how Foggy always envisioned things went on the day of his birth.

Foggy met Rosalind when he was four. Of course, he wasn't Foggy back then, only Franklin. Frankie, to his dad.

It was a court-mandated meeting, a perfunctory occasion set up to ensure that legal conditions were met surrounding the support that the judge had ordered his mother to contribute to his upbringing.

His dad had spent years in lawyer's offices and courts trying to enforce a support order. Proceedings had dragged on and on, Rosalind's skill at manipulating the law evident, until finally an agreement had been reached. Rosalind would pay. But she would only pay for her son in specific ways when in his company or arranged with him. Nothing was to go through her ex-husband's accounts. His new wife and new daughter would never see a dime of Rosalind's money. Everything would be done her way.

And so they met for the first time, with his dad and Rosalind not speaking to one another as he slowly toddled over and took her hand. It wasn't the last time he would ever see his parents in the same place at the same time, but it would be more than a decade before it happened again.

He remembered his dad and his stepmom Anna, her belly huge since his sister Candace was not yet born, looking at him sadly. It was like they were almost hoping he would change his mind and turn around, like a lost puppy recognizing the people who found it instead of the original owner.

She said hello politely, and led him to a sleek black town car which looked very out of place parked in front of his father's hardware store. The neighbors all stared from their front stoops. It made him feel strange, but important.

When he got in, he remembered her pulling her hand away. Remembered her staring at him, sizing him up. It made him uncomfortable, but it also made him feel valuable, like there was something about him she was seeing that he couldn't. They didn't say much to one another.

She took him to buy clothes. The store was expansive and clean, and he liked the way that there was a salesperson just for him who helped him pick things out and try them on. Everything she bought him was so much softer and warmer than anything he had ever worn before. And it all smelled like perfume. Rosalind wouldn't let him leave the store in the clothing he had been wearing. She told the clerk in the store to take them and burn them instead. Franklin was okay with that. His new clothes were much more comfortable.

They went to lunch. They sat on the patio of a place fancier than anywhere he had eaten before. Franklin wasn't old enough to read the menu, and it wasn't in English anyway, so Rosalind ordered for him. A salad with weird things in it that he wasn't sure were food. When it came, he picked at it and made disgusted faces, which angered her. Eventually, he sneakily fed it to a nearby leashed dog.

She told him all about the new school he would be starting in a few weeks. He was excited. He knew from talking to the older kids in the neighborhood that school meant fingerpainting and recess and smiling teachers reading stories. Rosalind told him that his school wasn't going to be like that. That he would have to wear a uniform and that he was going to learn important things and meet other children like him. When he told her he'd met other children before, she told him that she hadn't met children like these. The children at his new school would be better somehow. Franklin wasn't sure he understood, but he nodded along. She showed him pamphlets. It looked boring.

He tried to like her. He wanted to like her. She was his mom. He had been really excited to meet her. But he couldn't help feeling like there was something off about the whole thing. Other kids had moms who hugged them and sang them lullabies and were soft and had kind faces. That's what Anna was like. Rosalind wasn't any of those things. And she had been gone for so long that she was a stranger.

But even if Franklin wasn't sure if he liked her, he knew he wanted her to like him. So when the car dropped them back off in his neighborhood he leaned over and hugged her tightly. "It was really fun meeting you, mom," he said. She stiffened a bit, but hugged back eventually.

"Well," she said, "it was nice meeting you too, darling. I'll see you again in two weeks and you can tell me all about school. How's that?"

"I'd like that," Franklin said. And he meant it.

* * *

As the years went by, Franklin learned that pleasing Rosalind was never easy. She was demanding, and picky. Nothing he did ever seemed good enough for her. He always reminded her of his father. She'd tell him that, spitting it out like a vicious insult, any time Franklin was doing something particularly upsetting to her.

Despite the fact that he lived with his dad and only saw her for one weekend each month and for half of his summer vacation, the things she gave him shaped his existence and meant that her presence was always felt. The money, which his dad so desperately needed even as he resented having to take it, meant that her influence began to creep into every aspect of Franklin's life. It gave her a certain amount of control that his dad and stepmom, who struggled to keep their store afloat and raise their own daughter, just couldn't match.

It was a control that she wielded frequently and with a firm hand.

His appearance was always an issue for her. If he was to be seen with her, was to be presented as her son, than he had to look the part.

When he needed braces, he got them. When he needed glasses, he got them, with the promise of laser eye surgery the moment he reached the minimum age to have it done. She picked out all of his clothes, chose where he had his haircut and what the style would be, and did her best to ensure that he never looked, in her words, like he came from Hell's Kitchen.

He gained weight easily, and was a chubby little boy. At home, nobody pushed him to exercise more or eat better. His dad liked to barbecue in the summer and they ordered pizza on nights when the store was busy and Anna was working. They let him watch hours of television. Once Rosalind came into Franklin's life, she wasn't going to put up with it and decided to do something about it. She frequently subjected her son to the scrutiny of a private nutritionist or trainer when she was supposed to be spending time with him, usually without warning because she decided he needed it. She swung her son from diet to diet, made him weigh himself whenever she saw him and keep a journal tracking what he ate for her. She sent him home with bags of green vegetable powder for smoothies and whole-grain cereals to replace the sugary ones his dad indulged him with. She lectured him on pesticides in produce, and the chemicals in processed foods, and on the evils of what she called "street food".

The self-consciousness and anxiety about how he looked became ever present, even when his mother wasn't around.

By the time Franklin was 13, he was just under 100 pounds, on the low end of being a healthy weight for his age. But Rosalind always reminded him that once you were fat your body wanted you to stay that way forever, and so they were both ever vigilant.

Class and culture, too, were frequently an issue that brought Rosalind and his home life into conflict. If she was going to pay for Franklin to have the best, then she expected him to be the best, according to her standards.

She controlled his education because she paid for it, and it was not a small expense when he was attending one of the top private schools in Manhattan. His grades were sent to her and not his father, and his teachers met with Rosalind only. When Rosalind had him for the weekends, flying into the city from her usual home in Boston to a smaller New York condo she kept just for his visits, there were always inquiries about his grades, about his future plans, and about his extracurricular activities. No matter how advanced his classes, no matter how hard he studied, Rosalind expected nothing less than perfection. He would be valedictorian, would get high SAT scores, and would attend an Ivy League school just like she had because anything else meant that he hadn't tried hard enough.

He was only to have friends who she approved of (and so he learned to only tell her about the ones he knew she would like). And she made sure to spend her time with him cultivating what she felt were appropriate hobbies and interests. This meant playing the piano until his fingers ached and the joints in his hand cracked while the best instructor in the city yelled at him. It meant avoiding television and video games, and instead seeing the latest independent, foreign or documentary films. He hadn't yet figured out how to beat Rosalind at tennis or golf, but he was always expected to try and she never went easy on him.

But still, despite these things, Franklin loved spending time with Rosalind.

He loved the opera and the theater. He and Rosalind were a permanent fixture at Broadway shows, Shakespeare in the Park, and the Metropolitan Opera House, and when she couldn't take him she would let him invite friends from school to attend with him and use her seats.

She took him travelling. In the summers, he would often leave the oppressive stink and heat of Hell's Kitchen behind for Europe where he would accompany Rosalind to the world's finest art museums and historical sites, get to see the world's best musicians and performers and eat at its most expensive restaurants. If Rosalind wasn't able to take a longer vacation, they would spend their time in her Boston home, the weekends at her summer home at Martha's Vineyard.

And he never minded that she worked so much because he loved watching her work. She was brilliant at what she did. In a courtroom, she was passionate, witty and could have a whole room wrapped around her pinky finger listening to her. As a teacher and lecturer, she could stir a whole crowd into a frenzy or leave them breathless. Franklin never got upset when she dragged him along to sit in the back of a courtroom or the back of a lecture hall at Harvard where she taught. He took notes. He paid attention.

And she valued his opinion. She had him read draft paragraphs of books she was working on and offer suggestions. She tried out her speeches on him for feedback.

Watching her, he knew that he wanted to be a lawyer someday too.

He looked forward to their time together.

And he came to loathe returning to Hell's Kitchen afterwards. It seemed so depressing and drab compared to the fast-paced, sophisticated world that Rosalind seemed to live in. Like moving from the land of Oz in color back to Kansas in black and white. He hated the way that the children in his neighborhood stared at him hungrily, jealous of what he had that they didn't. He'd been mugged more than once, and bullied frequently. He took it, because he knew deep down that he was better than them, and that someday he would be living somewhere else, successful and happy. And they would still be stuck where they were.

His family were no help. They didn't understand him. He hated having to work in his father's store for free, having to watch Candace when they went out. He disliked the fact that they got irritated when he didn't want to to go ball games with them and sit in the cheap seats at the back, or refused to have pizza or fast food with them. They didn't see how hard he had to work, how driven he needed to be. Sometimes Franklin suspected that they hated him as much as the other kids in the neighborhood did, that they were secretly rooting for him to fail. Because he had everything that he needed, and they were always struggling. It wasn't his fault. It was the way Rosalind had set it up. It stung him sometimes watching his sister take a paper bag lunch that barely had anything in it to school while he knew he had a hot meal waiting for him and a credit card with a $1000 limit in his pocket. But what could he do? He didn't ask for things to be the way that they were. It wasn't his fault that his father couldn't provide for them the way Rosalind could provide for him.

Bitterness set in. Resentment festered.

Over time, Franklin became Rosalind's son, wholly and completely.


	3. The Offer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that this story is going to jump around in time a bit from chapter to chapter. Please let me know if it gets too confusing.

Rosalind Sharpe. Matt knew the name. He remembered it from his classes at Columbia. The woman was one of the best defense attorneys in the country. Her firm had represented the most notorious murderers, the most corrupt billionaires, and frequently defended the Irish mob in Boston. Her name was attached to many of the precedent-setting cases in the stack of text books and references he had sitting in his office. It didn't surprised him that Fisk would hire an attorney like her.

What did surprise him was Foggy's reaction. It wasn't just anxiety. It wasn't just shock. It was terror. Real fear like Matt had never sensed Foggy have before, not even when he collapsed at Foggy's feet after his fight with Nobu.

"Foggy?" he asked. "Is something wrong?"

Foggy's heart continued to beat hard against his chest. "Yes," his friend replied. "Fisk's going to get off. Everything we did was for nothing."

"No," whispered Karen, looking distraught at the idea. "That's not possible. There is more than enough evidence in existence to put him away for the rest of his life. I mean, he escaped from police custody for Christ's sake!"

"It doesn't matter," Foggy said. "Not anymore."

Before Matt could ask Foggy what he meant, the man had already fled the room and slammed his door. Matt was upset to hear the lock on the door click into place behind him.

He waited for Foggy to come out for the rest of the day, but it never happened. Finally, he picked the lock and let himself into the man's office, only to find him passed out drunk at the desk, a half-empty whiskey bottle next to him.

He woke him up and made sure he got into a cab, gave the driver enough money to cover the ride and directed the man to his address and to make sure Foggy got home okay.

* * *

Later that night, when the city was blanketed in darkness and lit only by the glow of streetlights and neon signs, Matt went out. He knew that he needed to investigate Fisk's case again, to do anything he could that might help the District Attorney seek justice. He went looking for low-level thugs he knew had worked for Fisk who he could convince to turn themselves in, drug dealers who may have had connections to Gao's operation. Anyone who he thought might aid the prosecution with building their case if they provided information or turned on the former Kingpin.

He was in the middle of delivering a particularly ferocious beating to a member of Turk Barrett's gang when he heard a familiar voice that made him stop. It was Rosalind Sharpe's voice. He recognized it from the news. She was in a car nearby. What was she doing in Hell's Kitchen?

The thug he was attacking ran away, but Matt was too distracted to care. He needed to know what Rosalind Sharpe was doing, what her plans were for Fisk's defense.

He followed the path of her voice, of her car, from the rooftops. Where was she going?

He tensed when he realized that the car was parking out front of Foggy's apartment building. He leaped to Foggy's roof and listened closely, disturbed to realize that it was Foggy's door she was knocking on.

His friend woke up at the noise, still drunk and probably confused about how he had gotten home, and stumbled to the door. But he didn't open it. He just stood there, breathing heavily, waiting, while Rosalind knocked.

"Franklin, I know you're in there," Rosalind said. "Trust me when I tell you that if you don't open this door you will regret it. This isn't a social call, darling."

Slowly, Foggy opened the door but he didn't let her in.

"What do you want?" Matt heard Foggy ask.

"Really?" Rosalind said angrily. "14 years and that's the first thing you have to say to me. A little rude, don't you think? A hello would be nice. Or at least something a little less hostile after everything I did for you. Are you going to let me just linger out here in your hallway where any of the junkies or thieves who probably live in this building can get a good look and decide to mug me or are you going to let me in?"

"What. Do. You. Want?" Foggy asked again, enunciating each word clearly. Matt couldn't remember the last time he had heard Foggy be that rude to anyone.

Rosalind stood there, silent. There was a long pause as both parties dug their heels in refusing to make the next move before Foggy finally opened his door wide enough for her to enter his apartment with a sigh.

Her heels clicked on the floor as she entered the apartment and looked around.

"I wish I could say you look well," Rosalind said. "But you don't. You're drunk. You look rough, and you've gained weight, and that pitiful excuse for a suit doesn't even fit you properly. It breaks my heart to see you right now, honestly. How could you let this happen?"

"Get to the point, please, Rosalind," Foggy said. "Your attempts to flatter me aren't working."

"You must have heard that I'm representing Wilson Fisk," she told him. "I couldn't resist getting involved when I saw your name attached to his case. Nelson and Murdock. Your own partnership. I was impressed until I realized how in over your head you really were. Taking on a man like that? In such a public way by assisting the DA? You chose the wrong side. And now I'm here to fix it and make sure that you don't get yourself killed."

"Why do you even care?" Foggy asked.

"I know that you never believed me when I said it, but I told you once before, Franklin, that everything I have ever done has been about protecting you," Rosalind said. "In this case, from yourself."

"And I told you that I don't need protection from anyone except you and that I never wanted to see you again," Foggy said.

"Too bad," Rosalind said. "I'm not going to stand by and watch you destroy yourself out of some misguided sense of crime and punishment. You can tell me that I'm evil all you want, but this case that you think you're on the right side of resulted in more deaths than it needed to, including the death of two of your own clients. Not exactly a clean record, is it? So I'm stepping in to help you. I'm here to make you an offer."

"What are you talking about?" Foggy asked.

"If Wilson Fisk gets off, if he is released, he will come after you and the people you care about. You've put a target on your back," Rosalind said. "Now, I can let it happen or I can take care of the problem for you. It's up to you."

"What are you saying?" Foggy asked. "Are you saying that you would deliberately tank your own client's case? That's beyond unethical!"

"Don't put words in my mouth please," Rosalind said. "I said no such thing. I am simply letting you know that I am currently putting together my defense strategy for Mr. Fisk, and how aggressively I choose to pursue things or whether I choose to recuse myself will depend in part upon you. Upon how much time I personally have to put into the case, or if there are other concerns that I need to attend to. Family concerns."

"Oh?" asked Foggy bitterly. "And what would it take for me to suddenly become a pressing family concern? I'm assuming you'd need me to admit that you're family at all, to start with. Which I have no interest in doing."

"There's a job waiting for you at Sharpe and Associates," Rosalind said. "You could work out of the New York office. It would pay well, and I would make sure you were taken care of. I could help you to move out of this place into somewhere much safer and nicer. We could start over."

"Start over? By you blackmailing me into working for you? Sure! Why not? Sounds like a great way to do that," Foggy said, disbelief in his voice.

"I prefer to think of it as applying leverage," Rosalind said. "I just want to finally put this business of you playing at being the blue collar champion, the crusader for the little guy, behind us. That's not who you are, Franklin. We both know it."

"You don't know anything about me," Foggy said.

"Even after all these years I know you better than you know yourself," Rosalind said. "I know that you're smarter than this. You know it too. You shouldn't be slumming it in some dive firm that operates in the same neighborhood as pool halls and liquor stores."

"Why?" Foggy asked. "Because that would be bad for your reputation?"

"No," Rosalind said. "Because it's the truth. I hate to see you wasting your talent. And believe it or not I've missed you."

"No," said Foggy. "You've just missed having me under your thumb. And I am never, ever letting that happen again. Get out."

"Are you really willing to put yourself and your friends in danger just to spite me?" Rosalind asked.

"No," said Foggy. "But I happen to believe in the legal system, and in justice. I'm not interested in manipulating it the way that you do. Fisk will get what's coming to him, but I'm not letting you distort how it happens."

"Okay then," Rosalind said. "But the offer still stands if you change your mind."

"Goodbye Rosalind," Foggy said.

She left.

From his place on the roof, Matt stood confused and dumbfounded by what he had heard. None of it made any sense, and none of it lined up with what he thought he knew about Foggy. Who was Rosalind Sharpe to him? And who did she think she was to play games like that with the legal system?

Matt resolved to find out. And unfortunately for him, it seemed like Foggy was the one with the answers. He didn't think he was going to like them very much.


	4. Friends Old and New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story is getting away from me a bit, but in a good way. I'm getting really into it. It will probably be a lot longer than I initially thought.
> 
> Also, if you catch any weird continuity errors vs. the show, I will fully admit that I haven't re-watched the final couple of episodes in a while, and watched them far less than the others. So I may have forgotten some small things. Point them out and I will try to correct, because I very much enjoy making this fit canon as much as possible.

Franklin wasn't good at making friends.

At home, the other kids were hateful and jealous of him. They played keepaway with his briefcase or glasses or school blazer. They called him Richie Rich and said "Sir, yes sir!" when he tried to talk to them in a mocking tone. Even his sister joined in. She knew what it would cost her to side with her aloof, arrogant older brother.

That was fine with Franklin. He didn't need them anyway.

The kids at school, though, didn't like him any more than the kids at home did. And that was worse. Because he wanted them to like him.

At the end of each school day, most of the other kids at his school went home to Upper East Side townhomes and apartments where they were looked after by assortments of maids, private tutors, and nannies. Franklin didn't. He went home to a cramped apartment above his parent's store in a neighborhood where most of the kids at his school wouldn't be allowed to visit him if they asked, not that he would ever in a million years invite them. It was a place where he shared a room with his sister that was separated by a bamboo curtain and barely fit his bed and desk, and where he was the one expected to cook himself dinner most nights if he didn't want to have to eat junk. At home, he was Richie Rich. But at school, he felt like anything but. And it meant that he couldn't let himself get too close to the other students. Nobody could find out what his life was actually like. They had to think he was one of them.

And so, rather than try to get close to them, Franklin became the bully, the guy who threw his mother's reputation and money in their faces any chance he could, who appeared to think he was better than all of them because he secretly knew that he was nothing. It made them hate him. But it also made them keep their distance.

He resolved himself to loneliness and longed for the weekends spent with Rosalind where he didn't have to pretend to be something he wasn't.

Until he met Marci.

He met Marci Stahl when he was 12 and they both started prep school together. Franklin was coming from private school, as were most of the other kids, but Marci wasn't. She was attending on a scholarship.

This immediately interested Franklin, and immediately repulsed everyone else, because it meant that Marci didn't come from money. The scholarship was provided to her as part of a city-wide program to identify high performers in the public education system who came from disadvantaged backgrounds. Marci qualified because her father had gotten PTSD in the Gulf War and was in and out of hospitals, while her mother supported them as a nurse. While it was an appealing story to the board in charge of admittance and scholarships, it meant that the other students immediately branded her as not only a charity case, but also as likely to be disturbed.

Franklin wondered if it were true. He doubted it, but it made her fascinating. And tough. She took the other students bullying and taunts and turned it around on them, revealing a wicked sense of humour and a razor-sharp wit that reminded him of his mother.

One day, he noticed her heading towards the bus stop after school. "Hey," he yelled.

"What the hell do you want?" Marci turned around and asked.

He ran to catch up with her. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"Home," Marci said. "And yes, I'm taking the bus. The subway too. To the East Village. Alphabet City. Where I live. Do you have something to say about that?"

"No, I just wanted to know if you wanted a ride," he said. "I have a car that picks me up. It can drop you."

"5th Avenue is in the opposite direction," said Marci.

"So's Hell's Kitchen, where I live," Franklin replied. "But I don't mind."

Marci looked like she was going to say something, but decided against it. She followed him.

The car was hired by his mother. It picked him up from home every day in the morning and after school at exactly 15 minutes after classes let out, except on days that he advised Rosalind he had extracurricular activities to attend. The driver was always the same. His name was Reynaldo, and Franklin said hello to the man at his raised eyebrow as he and Marci got into the back seat.

"Who's this, then?" Reynaldo asked.

"This is Marci," Franklin said. "She needs to go to..." Marci jumped in to provide her address.

"No can do. Your mother will kill me," Reynaldo said.

"Are you serious?" Franklin asked.

"You've met the woman. I don't want to get on her bad side," Reynaldo replied. "Home or nowhere, man."

"Home it is then," said Marci. "What?" she asked, when Franklin shot her a sideways look. "You were the one who asked me to get in the car with you. Plus, I'm curious. Your mother is Rosalind Sharpe but you're going to Hell's Kitchen. I want to know why. I can always bus home from there later. It's not like my mom will notice or care."

"You know who I am?" Franklin asked as the car pulled away.

"Of course I do," Marci said. "Kids talk. Most of the time it's about me, but I've heard you come up. Franklin Nelson. Short fuse. Too smart for his own good. His mommy's the best defense attorney in the country, so don't piss him off or when the SEC or FBI inevitably show up at your folks' door, they might just end up in jail."

Franklin laughed to himself. "Yeah, well the part they leave out, the part they don't know, is that I don't live with her all the time."

"Apparently not," said Marci. "She still calls the shots though." She gestured to the driver.

"Yeah, well, she pays for it," Franklin said.

"Must be nice," said Marci.

When they got to the store, Marci's eyes widened as he took her up to the apartment above. It was the rare day when Anna was actually home doing dishes, and Candace was doing her homework at the dining room table.

"Who's this?" Anna asked, surprised.

"A friend," Franklin said, shrugging his shoulders.

Candace looked up from her math homework. "Ooooh... Frankie has a girlfriend!" she said.

"Frankie?" Marci asked, teasing.

"She's just a friend. I figured we could do homework together. Is that okay? She might need to stay for dinner too." Franklin asked Anna.

Anna grinned back at him. "Fine by me. Not in your bedroom though. You can work in the living room, young man. There's not enough room at your desk for two people anyway. And I hope she's not expecting caviar."

Marci laughed. "Whatever you're making is fine by me, ma'am."

"So polite!" Anna said. "Do they teach you manners at that school? Because if so, this one must be failing." She pointed at Franklin.

"Really?" Franklin asked, embarrassed.

"Oh come on! I'm teasing, sweetie," Anna said as they went into the living room and sprawled their school bags out onto the couch.

"Franklin Nelson," Marci said. "You are just full of surprises."

Franklin smiled when he realized that she didn't mean the bad kind.

"Now," Marci said, "You need to dish. You must have gone to school with a lot of the sociopaths in training in our classes, right? Give me some ammunition I can use to bring the pain. I know you must have been collecting it."

He laughed. She was right. He was. "Well, Shannon Elizabeth Dorsey, the dark-haired girl who wears the ridiculous headbands... my mom told me that her parents got a messy divorce over the summer. Apparently her mom walked in on her dad in a compromising position with their pool cleaner."

"What?" said Marci. "Oh, that's gold. What else?"

From that moment on, Marci and Franklin were allies, if not exactly friends. She was the only one he trusted to understand his home life. And she wanted to be a lawyer too. So they worked together to make school bearable for each other.

* * *

 

"Franklin Nelson", the TA called out, and Foggy reluctantly raised his hand, wishing that he could convince Columbia to just put Foggy on all his paperwork. He hoped that Marci wasn't paying attention.

Of course she was. He shouldn't have expected anything less from her. At the mention of his name, her entire body stiffened and he saw her head turn towards him. There was shock in her eyes when they met his. He sighed and looked away, trying to blend into the furniture.

He could feel her eyes on him throughout the entire class. When it ended, he rushed as quickly as he could to the door, but felt his arm yanked back.

"Franklin?" she asked in amazement. "No way! No goddamned way! I don't even believe it."

"I think you must have mistaken me for someone else," he said.

"Another Franklin Nelson?" she said. "Not entirely ridiculous actually, given that you look like a fat homeless person ate the man I knew. Jesus."

"Marci..." Foggy said.

"I knew it. Franklin Nelson... what the hell happened to you?" she asked.

He smiled at her. "A lot," he said. "Clearly. Do you wanna grab some lunch or something?"

They did. And he tried to explain it as best he could.

"It's Foggy now," he said. "Nobody calls me Franklin anymore."

"Foggy?" Marci asked. "Well that's awful. Are you a future lawyer or a character in a Hanna Barbara cartoon?"

"It's my name, Marci. Please?" Foggy begged.

She sighed. "Fine. If that's what you insist, Foggy Bear," she said, and he scowled at the nickname. "Now do you want to tell me what you're doing here?" she asked.

"Attending law school? Isn't that what we're all doing here?" Foggy asked.

"You vanished without a trace right before Senior year," Marci said. "I asked around. You didn't transfer to any of the other prep schools in the city. I ran into Rosalind at Matt Hollingsworth's father's Christmas party and asked her about you, figuring that she'd be happy to see me. She asked me who I was and who I was talking about and told me that I must be mistaken. She said that she didn't have a son. Did she cut you off?"

Foggy shrugged and gestured to himself. "Do you think she would be paying for the guy sitting in front of you to be here?" he asked.

"That fucking bitch!" Marci said. "What did you do? Did she find out about that that cash you took out on your credit card to help your parents with their lease?"

"No," Foggy said. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that I need you to keep quiet about this, alright."

"Keep quiet?" Marci said. "Why? You should want me to shout her name from the rooftops, sweetie. Use the name, since she won't give you the money. I would if I could. Whether she cares if you do or not, why aren't you walking around like you own this place?"

"Because I'm not that guy anymore, okay?" Foggy said. "The guy who you knew, Franklin Nelson was an egotistical asshole who thought that he was better than other people and that he deserved to have everything handed to him, and didn't care where it came from. He sold his soul in exchange for expensive clothes and tickets to the opera and summers in a New England beach house. Until one day, he woke up, saw what he had let happen and killed himself. He doesn't exist anymore. Rosalind was right. She doesn't have a son, so it wouldn't be right for me to claim to be him."

"That guy you're talking about was my friend," Marci said. "He could make me howl with laughter and feel fantastic about myself while simultaneously cutting other people down to size more efficiently and brutally than anyone I've ever met. I smoked my first joint with him. Got drunk with him for the first time. He taught me how to give head, and taught me how amazing my body could feel in exchange. And at the end of the day he knew how to properly compartmentalize his feelings about all of it. Maybe he did have everything handed to him, but that didn't mean he didn't still work his ass off to be the best, so yeah he did deserve it and no, he didn't ask where it came from. He was never the kind of guy to think that things like that were his problem, which I respected him for. Franklin Nelson was amazing. You... I don't know who you are yet, but you're right. You're definitely not him."

"I told you. I'm Foggy Nelson. From Hell's Kitchen. My parents used to own a hardware store there, and now they live in Jersey. I wear secondhand clothes and smoke cheap cigarettes, drink beer and listen to heavy metal. I eat at McDonalds and I love Cheetos and microwave hot pockets, and I could give a shit how it makes me look or if it's all gonna kill me someday. I came here on a scholarship and with extra money made by cleaning factories after closing. I spend my free time feeding the campus' stray cats when the RA for my dorm isn't looking and learning braille so that I can leave notes around the room that my blind roommate can actually read. That's who I am. So if you're not interested in being friends with that guy, then I think we're done here."

"Yeah," said Marci sadly. "I guess we are."

* * *

They weren't done.

It only took a month after he saw her for Foggy to find himself being jumped by her and thrown down onto some poor kid's bed during a floor party in his dorm. She hadn't even closed the door behind them.

"This doesn't mean I like you, Foggy Bear," Marci said as she yanked his Tool t-shirt over his head, then went back to sucking on his lower lip.

"Maybe not," Foggy said. "But it does mean that you find fat homeless me sexy, which is surprising."

"Stop talking," she said, and she moved to pull off the long-sleeved shirt he still wore.

Foggy stopped her. "Wait," he said. "Don't."

"What, are you self-conscious about how you look with your shirt off? You should be." Marci said bluntly. "But it's fine. I am too drunk and horny to care."

She kept going and he let her, and to her credit she only paused briefly when she saw the thin lines of the scars marking the inside of his wrists and arms. "I don't need to know," she said. Foggy breathed a sigh of relief.

She was riding him and moaning loudly when Foggy registered that the door was opening, and that the tip of a cane was creeping into the room.

"Matt!" he yelled. Marci barely even stopped, just turned her head and yelled "What the hell, pervert? We're busy!" The door slammed as Matt left in a hurry.

"Shit, Marci! That was my roommate!" Foggy tried to push Marci off of him.

"So?" she yelled, irritated. "What the hell, Fran-"

"Foggy," he said, "My name is Foggy. And I came with him and promised to look out for him, alright? He's blind and probably pretty drunk. Shit. I have to go."

Foggy ran from the room to go and look for Matt.

When he finally found him, he was back in their own room on their own floor, laying on his bed.

"Hey," Foggy said tentatively. "You found your way back, huh?"

"I'm blind Foggy, not an invalid. It was only three floors down," Matt said.

"You were also really drunk the last time I saw you," Foggy said. "Practically passed out, even. I shouldn't have left you alone."

"It's fine. It was a party. You wanted to get laid. What kind of wingman would I be if I stopped you?" Matt said.

"That wasn't why I went to the party tonight," Foggy said. "I genuinely thought we needed to get out and have some fun."

"So it was just because it was Marci Stahl then?" Matt asked. "I find that hard to believe."

"What does that mean?" Foggy asked.

"She just... she doesn't seem like your type, that's all," Matt said, slurring his words. Matt normally wasn't so honest with his opinions. Foggy had learned that alcohol made him more likely to say what he was really thinking instead of closing off. It was part of why he loved drinking with him. "I don't think she really likes you," Matt continued. "I've heard her, you know? Talking about you to other people. Putting you down because of how you look, how you act. She acts like she's better than you. You don't deserve that."

"She acts like she's better than everyone," Foggy said, "but believe me when I tell you that it's because deep down she knows she's not. And maybe she's exactly who I deserve. Don't assume that you know people, Matt. They're more complicated than that. Besides, who I sleep with is none of your business. I'm sorry I left though. We were having fun until then, weren't we?"

"Yeah," said Matt. "We were."


	5. Secrets and Lies

The next morning, his knuckles bruised and raw from encounters with the various faces of Turk Barrett's friends and accomplices, Matt headed up the stairs towards their office expecting to hear the usual sounds of Foggy typing and Karen humming softly to herself while she made coffee. He steeled himself for the confrontation he knew he would have to have with Foggy.

Instead he was surprised to hear a loud argument happening, and not between Foggy and Karen. Marci was there.

"- need to fix this. I am not going to lose everything because of some sick, twisted revenge plot orchestrated by that woman to get back at you!" Marci screamed. "Whatever she wants, you give it to her or I'll find out what it is and I will. I mean it."

"What's going on?" Matt said as he opened the door.

"I'm being screwed over is what's going on," said Marci. "Landman and Zack are being absorbed by Sharpe and Associates. Which means that all of the impropriety and criminal activity that Foggy promised me that I would be getting ahead of by exposing is now being swept under the rug, along with my career. They suspended me this morning pending an investigation into whether or not I breached the confidentiality of our clients by providing you with evidence of Fisk and Owlsley's criminal activity."

"They can't do that," Matt said. "The documents you provided clearly show that Landman and Zack engaged in communications with Mr. Fisk and Mr. Owlsley for the purposes of committing fraud. That clearly makes what you did a crime-fraud exception to the rules surrounding attorney-client privilege."

"Except if Fisk gets off and no fraud is ever proven or connected to those documents," Marci said. "In which case, I'll be disbarred. And Rosalind Sharpe and her team are already hard at work, I'm sure, making a case that everything I handed you is inadmissible."

"I don't understand," Karen said. "How can they do that? And why do you think Foggy can do anything about it? You said Fisk's attorney wants revenge?"

"You haven't told them," Marci said. "Not even Matt. Not even after all these years. I can't believe you."

"Marci, please don't..." Foggy said desperately. Matt could still smell the booze on him from the night before. He hadn't showered, and was exhausted.

"Rosalind Sharpe is your friend here's mother," Marci said. "Everything you've worked for over the last few months is about to be destroyed because more than a decade ago, he threw a temper tantrum and pissed her off. Not sure why she waited so long to finally deliver the finishing blow, but here we are. What does she want?"

Matt went over what he had heard Rosalind say to Foggy the night before in his mind. Could it possibly be true? Rosalind did refer to Foggy as family. But it didn't fit with what Matt knew about his best friend.

"You're wrong," Matt said to Marci. "I've met Foggy's mother, Marci. His whole family. I don't know why you think that, but..."

"It's the truth, Matt. You've met his stepmother," Marci replied. "Somehow the fairy tale got reversed in little Franklin's case and his birth mother ended up the wicked one. He never told you because they don't talk. Like I said, temper tantrum."

"Stop!" Foggy said. "Marci, I am going to fix this, okay?"

"What. Does. She. Want?" Marci asked. "I know her. She's doing this for a reason, and that reason has to be you."

"I don't know!" Foggy screamed, upset. "I don't know, Marci. Nothing good, I can promise you that."

"Promise me that I didn't throw my entire life away, everything I've worked so hard for, because I trusted you," Marci said. "Can you promise me that, Foggy?" She wielded his nickname like a knife, using it to cut into him and draw blood.

"I'm so sorry," Foggy said."

"That's what I thought," Marci said. "Turns out that after all these years the new you is an even bigger asshole than before. Don't call me unless it's with good news."

With that, she walked out the door.

* * *

Matt took a deep breath once the door shut behind Marci and gripped his cane a little tighter trying to get his bearings.

"Your mother?" Karen asked.

Foggy just sighed and rubbed his face tiredly, moving to retreat to his office again, but Karen grabbed him by the arm before he could.

"No, you don't get to walk away today, Foggy. Fisk is being defended by your mother?" Karen asked again.

"What do you want me to say, Karen?" Foggy asked. "She birthed me, yes. But we don't talk. I haven't said one word to the woman since I was 17 years old, alright? And I have no idea why she decided to come to New York and defend Fisk or what she wants!"

He was lying. Matt didn't have to hear how erratically Foggy's heart was beating to know that. Whether he was lying about the state of their relationship or what happened between them, Matt couldn't know. But he had heard Rosalind tell Foggy exactly what she wanted from him the night before.

"You said you never would have kept anything this big from me," Matt said quietly. "That night. The night that you..." He caught himself as he remembered that they weren't alone. "The night that you walked out on me."

"Matt..." Foggy said, his voice desperate and pleading for forgiveness.

"No," Matt said. "I believed you. It didn't matter what anything else was telling me. Your heart. Your body language. You're my friend and I believed you when you said that you knew that you would never lie to me the way I..." He couldn't continue. Not with Karen there.

"It's not the same," Foggy said.

"It changes everything," Matt said. "I don't even know who you are. This entire time..."

"Hurts, doesn't it," Foggy said coldly, and he jerked his arm away from Karen. The office door slammed behind him signalling that their conversation was over.

* * *

The rest of the day passed in tense silence as the three of them worked, waiting for the moment when they could all go their separate ways.

Matt forced himself to disconnect his personal drama from the problem at hand and preoccupied himself with research. He needed to know more about Rosalind Sharpe, about how her mind worked and what her connection was to Foggy, about her past and current clients, her most famous cases. If she was playing a game, he wanted to make sure he understood it's rules and could anticipate her next move. He wanted to win.

The more he learned, the more concerned he became. Rosalind's firm, Sharpe and Associates, was one of the most expensive and well-regarded firms in the country. It's client list read like a who's who of American politicians, celebrities, and infamous criminals. She had started the firm herself in the 1980's with one other partner, and in the beginning it was a small New York City firm that worked to represent labor unions and defend working class criminals who'd been harassed or railroaded by the system. There were several infamous cases that she had handled which had seen wrongfully convicted men on death row released when Rosalind won them new trials or brought new evidence to light. But by the end of the 80's her firm had begun to develop troubling ties to New York's Irish and Russian mobs. Their connections to the labor movement began to associate them with corruption and cronyism rather than their initial working class ethos. Rosalind's partnership merged with another and their firm moved it's offices to Boston, began to take on more corporate clients and sensational cases, began to rake in millions of dollars.

Rosalind earned the nickname Razor for the way she could demolish a prosecution's arguments with precision and focus. Her cases were marked by key evidence of guilt being declared inadmissible or never getting to the jury and witnesses being relentlessly grilled on the stand until a jury didn't know whether to believe anything that came out of their mouth. Her cases frequently ended in mistrials or convictions that were overturned on appeal. She loved to slow the system down with protracted battles over every word out of a prosecutor's mouth and wielded minutiae and minor details of a case like they were battle axes.

Matt realized that Foggy may have been right. If Rosalind decided to dig her heels in and make Fisk's case her highest priority, there was a very real possibility that everything could fall apart. The thought terrified him.

Matt wasn't sure where his friend fit into any of it. There was nothing in any of the profiles of Rosalind in newspapers or magazines that mentioned her having a son or juggling a career and a family. He couldn't find any record that she was ever married to Foggy's dad, although he resolved to hunt down further information on when the man had married Anna.

While caught up listening to his screen reader, Matt heard a gentle rapping on his office door. "Come in, Karen," he said, pausing what he was doing.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine," Matt said. "Just a little shaken up. Surprised."

"Me too," Karen said. "And I haven't known Foggy as long as you have, so I can only imagine how you feel."

"Did you need something?" he asked.

"I just..." Karen said, but then seemed to back away from her thought.

"What is it, Karen?" he asked again, gently to encourage her.

"You should go easy on Foggy," she finally said. "If what he said is true about not talking to his mother, about their relationship, then it can't be easy for him to suddenly have her show up. And I'm sure he didn't tell you for a reason."

"Does that matter?" Matt asked. "He lied, Karen. About something fundamental. Something that I should have known. His mother is a defense attorney. A great one. And all through law school any time that we discussed why we wanted to practice law together, what kind of lawyers we wanted to be, it just never came up? Any time that I spent the holidays with his family, he didn't think that I would want to know that there was an entire history there that changed how he was with them and what they meant to him? And even worse, when we had that fight... I don't want to get into it, but he threw a lot of accusations in my face. He played at being betrayed and hurt, when he knew the entire time that he was being a hypocrite. What am I supposed to do with any of that, Karen?"

"You're supposed to be his friend, Matt," Karen said. "You're supposed to try and understand things from his point of view, and then work from there to get back to a place where you can trust each other again. I still don't know what that fight was about, but I know that he did it for you once, hypocrite or not. And we all have secrets. We all have things that belong to us that we want to keep for ourselves, things about ourselves that we're ashamed of and terrified of facing. We're entitled to that. And Foggy's no different, as much as he might seem to wear his heart on his sleeve. So I think you should talk to him."

"Maybe," said Matt, wondering what Karen's secrets were. "I'll think about it. Thanks, Karen."

"Good night," she said as she left, shutting the door behind her.


	6. Pressure

Franklin would never call Brett a friend. The boy hated him. He scowled at Franklin when he saw him walking up the steps coming home, just like all the other boys sitting on the front stoop of their building did.

But his mother, Bess, adored Franklin. She worked as a nanny for an Upper East Side family, and so she understood him better than his own parents did. She knew how much weight he carried on his shoulders, the burden of expectations that he always had to push himself to meet. And she knew what it was like to come home to something that felt lesser, felt frustratingly unfair, at the end of each day. And so, whenever he could find the time after school, Franklin would find himself sitting at Brett's dining room table listening to Bess tell him about the adventures of the children she was in charge of, about the family's squabbles and struggles. And he would tell her about the other kids at his school, about their families. And she would laugh heartily whenever he was particularly bitchy. He shared these things with her for the same reason that she liked talking to him, because nobody else in Hell's Kitchen wanted to hear it unless it was bad news. People were spiteful that way. Bess would ply him with baked goods that he knew he shouldn't be eating (even though she made sure to make them with low-fat ingredients just for him once he had told her his concern) and pour him coffee like he was just another adult.

Sometimes Franklin would bring her presents. Things from Rosalind's apartment that he knew she'd never miss - a bottle of scotch from the liquor cabinet, a few nice cigars that his mom only pulled out when she had company, and once an expensive pair of designer sunglasses that Rosalind had bought him following his laser eye surgery that looked ridiculous on him. Sometimes when Rosalind took him shopping, he would ask for things that could reasonably be for him so that he could give them to her. Bess had a taste for the finer things in life, and Franklin was happy to share them with her when he could.

If Brett ever complained to his mother about her affection for the strange, cold boy in the apartment next door, Franklin never knew about it. But he was sure it happened. Which is why he was surprised one day when Bess told him that Brett needed his help.

"That boy is having a hard time," Bess said. "Failing classes, falling behind. I was hoping that you would consider tutoring him. I know how smart you are and how advanced the classes you're taking are. And I think that once the two of you got to know one another you would find that the two of you have similar interests. Did you know that he wants to be a police officer? It scares the hell out of me because the job took my late husband from me, but all the same it's what he wants. But it's never gonna happen if things keep going the way they're going. Can you help him?"

Franklin opened his mouth to object, but Bess cut him off before he could.

"Now I know that you think he doesn't like you, but how the hell else do you think you're gonna change his mind?" she said.

Franklin opened his mouth again, but was again cut off.

"And don't tell me that you don't have the time," she said, "because you certainly have the time to sit here with me eating my apple pie and listening to me go on. And if it comes down to me or him, well he needs you more than I do so I'll make the sacrifice."

Franklin smiled. He knew he couldn't say no. "Fine," he said dramatically. "Since it seems like you won't take no for an answer."

"When it comes to my Brett, I sure won't," she said. And she put another scoop of ice cream on his plate next to his pie.

* * *

Tutoring Brett was unpleasant for both of them. Brett clearly didn't want to be there, sitting behind the counter at his family's store while Franklin kept one eye on the occasional customer. And Franklin was stressed out having to worry about Brett's grades when his own were beginning to slip. He didn't have the time, but he loved Bess, and so he put up with it. But he still just wanted to get it over with. He had better things he needed to be doing.

"So the impact of the Treaty of Versailles..." Franklin said, but was interrupted.

"Why are you doing this?" Brett asked.

"What do you mean?" Franklin asked back. "Your mom asked me to."

"And you listened?" Brett asked.

"Yeah," Franklin said. "You've met her. She's not exactly a person you say no to."

Brett smiled. "Maybe not. But I still don't get it. Why do you like her so much? You can't make friends your own age, you have to chat up sweet old ladies instead?"

"I like her," Franklin said. "She's nice to me. She doesn't judge me based on where I go to school or how I look. You could learn something from her example."

"I don't have a problem with you because of where you go to school or how you look," Brett said.

"Oh, really?" Franklin said.

"Yeah, really. I have a problem with you because you walk around like you think you're better than everyone," Brett said. "Like you think you're so smart and we're all just a bunch of losers."

"I am smart. And I've got myself figured out. And yeah, I know I'm not gonna spend my life earning minimum wage or living paycheck to paycheck. So that makes me an asshole?" Franklin asked, offended.

"No, your attitude makes you an asshole," Brett said. "You can't help your old man out every once in a while? We all see you sitting in here wishing you could be anywhere else, acting like you don't give a damn. We see him out scrubbing the graffiti off the front of the store, chasing down the shoplifters, unloading the inventory. Your sister helps him. Your mom too. And where are you?"

"Anna's not my mom," Franklin said. "And I'm busting my ass working hard to get out of this place, so that I don't have to spend my days scrubbing graffiti and lifting heavy boxes. That's where I am. This," he said, pointing to a page in the textbook in front of them, "isn't nothing. And it's not easy. It's my future. Not just my classes, which are so far past what you're learning that you may as well still be in Kindergarten by the way, but the extracurricular activities, the volunteer work, the networking. I'm going to go to an Ivy League college. I'm going to get my law degree. I'm going to go to work every day in an office that gives me a view of the entire city, that lets me work with some of the most important politicians in the country, that makes me someone important. So that when this place is gone, when my dad can't scrub graffiti or lift boxes anymore, I can take care of him. What are you gonna do Brett? Are you gonna take care of Bess by being a high school drop out? Hell, even if you pass your classes, are you gonna take care of her getting yourself shot in the line of duty as a cop?"

"Maybe not," Brett said. "But I know that even if I can't take care of her, she wouldn't want me to worry about it. The thing that would make her proud would be to see me be a good person. With integrity. Who cares and is there for her when she needs it. Not some rich jag-off who can throw money at her to excuse the fact that he never sees her. You see, my mom did set the example for me. And yours, the mystery woman who nobody around here's ever even glimpsed? Well, she clearly set the example for you."

"You know what," Franklin said, "We're done here."

"I think we are, yeah," Brett said, getting up to walk away. As he did, he accidentally knocked Franklin's briefcase off the counter, and raised an eyebrow but said nothing when three bottles of pills fell out that were quickly shoved back in.

The bell was ironically cheerful as the door shut behind him.

* * *

Franklin put his head in his hands after Brett left, hoping that the boy wouldn't tell Bess about the pills in his bag. It's not like they weren't prescribed for him and legitimate. He would just rather word not get back to his dad and Anna that Rosalind had asked the doctor to diagnose him with Attention Deficit Disorder and prescribe him the Adderall, or that she had given him the over the counter caffeine and sleeping pills. They helped him focus when he needed to, and then helped him sleep when his thoughts kept him up at night. He didn't think his dad would understand.

He fidgeted wishing he could leave his place behind the counter, but he promised his dad that he would watch the store, even though it was empty. And his dad had a very strict no laptop rule when minding the store since he worried about Franklin being seen through the window and making the place a target for burglars. He was just contemplating closing up early and not telling his dad when his phone rang. His mother was calling.

"Hey mom," he said with a sigh.

"Franklin," she said, dispensing with pleasantries. "Am I interrupting your studying?"

"You are," he lied, knowing she would get angry at him if she knew he was looking after the store. "But it's okay. I was actually just tutoring someone."

"Well that's a waste of time," Rosalind said. "I don't want you helping other children at your own expense. The SATs are coming up quickly and I expect nothing less than stellar results. Focus on your own achievement, Franklin. I'm not paying for you to get other people into college."

"I know, mom," Franklin said.

"Well it doesn't sound like you do to me," she said. "I'm calling to tell you that I had David book you another appointment with Dr. Fisher. He said he was concerned about the level of anxiety you expressed in your last appointment, and he asked me to book some extra time so that he can talk to you about cognitive behavioral therapy to help you work through it. It's for Thursday at 4pm. Reynaldo will drive you right there after school."

David was Rosalind's assistant. The man did everything for her, including re-arrange Franklin's schedule as Rosalind dictated.

"I can't," Franklin told her, wincing from the pain of the fight he knew he was about to have with her.

"What do you mean you can't?" Rosalind said. "I asked David, and he said that you didn't have any extracurricular activities or appointments booked that afternoon. Did something get moved around? I do wish you would let David know these things in advance, dear. He's struggling to keep up with it as it is."

"No, it's..." Franklin stuttered, scared to tell her. "I promised dad I would watch Candace that night."

"Candace?" Rosalind asked.

"My sister, remember?" Franklin reminded her.

"Well that's ridiculous! This is much more important," she said. "You'll have to tell him you can't do it. He can hire a babysitter like a responsible parent has to do."

A babysitter couldn't also close the store up, but Franklin wasn't about to tell Rosalind that. It would incense her more.

"Mom-" he said.

"No, you tell him that you have an appointment. Let him deal with it," Rosalind said. "It's not your responsibility to watch his child, Franklin. Honestly... that man. Does he think that you have nothing better to do?"

Yes, Franklin wanted to say. His dad did think that he had nothing better to do. But it was the man's anniversary and Franklin knew they couldn't afford a babysitter otherwise to go out. As it was, they were only going to dinner and a movie. But you didn't say no to Rosalind.

"I'll tell him," Franklin promised.

She hung up, and Franklin got up to begin closing the store. It was supposed to be open for another hour, but his parents were at Candace's school play for another two hours. Besides, he had at least three hours of homework ahead of him that he needed to finish.

His dad and Anna would never know. It was just one more secret that he didn't feel the need to tell them.


	7. Unraveling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So please forgive me regarding the legal aspects of some of this stuff. My knowledge of the legal system comes from extensive re-watching of Law and Order and the desire to tell a good story, so it may all be BS. But it sounds plausible, right? I hope?
> 
> Also, I totally forgot until just recently when I re-watched the last episode that Matt and Foggy ended up being Hoffman's representation. So I had to pivot a little bit and adjust what I was doing. I think it worked out though. We'll see...

It had been almost a week. A week of strained silence in the office. A week of Foggy bolting for the door the moment he could. A week of Matt refusing to talk to Foggy. And a week of Daredevil leaving bloody beaten piles of former Fisk associates for the local police to find.

And yet every day Matt heard reporters cover Fisk's prosecution with more and more sympathy for the defense, as the story went from one of a Kingpin ruling the city with a brutal efficiency to one of a man with a tortured childhood who grew into a powerful but dangerous figurehead for gentrification whose enemies worked to take him down by accusing him of crimes he had not yet been proven to have committed. It was infuriating, and proof of Sharpe and Associates long record of careful media manipulation related to their cases.

The documents from Landman and Zack were still being fought over. A hearing was set for the following week. If proven inadmissible, it collapsed any connections that could be made between Fisk and Elena's tenement case, and any ties he had to Owlsley that implicated him in the man's murder or shady accounting practices. It still left Hoffman's testimony and the charges related to his escape from custody, but it was still alarming and upsetting to see the work that they had done be for nothing.

Matt was tense and angry. Every moment that he spent in the office felt like a moment he was needed as Daredevil, but when he was Daredevil he felt like he could never do enough. And he couldn't talk to anyone about any of it. Not that he wanted to. He felt like dealing with his issues with Foggy would only serve to distract him from what was really important.

So his stomach filled with dread when he came back from lunch to find a nervous, scared Brett waiting in the office, and an exhausted Foggy leaning against a wall, both of them silently waiting for him.

"Hey, Murdock," Brett said.

"Brett," Matt replied. "What's going on? Where's Karen?"

"I sent her to lunch," Foggy said. "I didn't want her around to hear this."

"Hear what?" Matt asked, his hands starting to tremble.

"Aaronson and Morelli are back on the job," Brett said, finally. "Bergman and O'Malley too."

Matt shook his head. "That's impossible. They were on Fisk's payroll."

"As uncovered in the documents from Silver and Brent," Foggy said, "which, while not inadmissible yet, are up for debate and not available to the public anyway."

"Maybe, but Hoffman named them. According to him, they killed at least twelve men in custody under orders from Wilson Fisk," Matt said.

Neither man said anything to that, and Matt's heart suddenly felt like it had dropped into his stomach.

"Yeah, well, apparently that's up in the air now too," said Brett. "Enough that the NYPD felt that there was no reason to continue to suspend the men pending investigation based on his testimony."

"I don't understand," Matt said. "Hoffman's confession is ironclad. The man spoke to Fisk, took orders directly from him, killed for him and was held hostage because of it."

"According to him," Brett said. "Rumor around the station has it that Fisk's defense team is already starting to poke holes in his story. Including questioning some of Fisk's guys to be character witnesses against him and claim their own innocence."

"There's no way that a jury will buy that Hoffman made the whole thing up," Matt said. "The men who were holding him hostage were picked up."

"Owlsley's men," Foggy said. "Not Fisk's."

"And from what I've heard, Hoffman wasn't exactly ever a model officer," Brett said. "Supposedly the NYPD handed over evidence implicating him in corruption well before Fisk came back to the city. And the guys are talking, saying that the man in the mask killed Blake, and that even if he didn't Hoffman had an affair with the guy's wife that led to a pretty messy divorce. Personally, I think that the NYPD doesn't want the scandal. They'd rather have Hoffman be lying and make him the fall guy, let Fisk go, than admit that so many men could be involved in something like this. It's disgusting."

"Hoffman's our client," Matt said. "We would have heard something."

"Except that the DA may not even know yet," Foggy said. "We need to head this off. Reach out to them and inform them of things being said about our client, talk to Hoffman and go over his testimony again and make sure we can find evidence to back it all up. Make sure that we run a full background check on him looking for anything in his past that will be brought up in court or that the press might find. I know Rosalind, Matt. If she finds so much as one little loose thread to pull on, the entire thing will come unraveled and his testimony will be a wash. And if that happens..."

Foggy didn't have to finish the sentence. All three of them knew what could happen.  
.  
"Wait," Brett said. "You and Fisk's attorney are on a first name basis?" he asked Foggy.

Foggy sighed and started to answer, but Matt interrupted him coldly. "She's his mother," Matt told Brett.

Brett's attitude went from one of frustration to hatred in an instant. And Matt was surprised when Brett aimed that hatred directly at Foggy.

"Oh, hell no," Brett said angrily, shaking his head.

"Brett..." Foggy said, trying to explain but he was cut off.

"No, I should have known better than to ever trust you or get involved in your bullshit. Pretending to be on the side of the righteous... acting like you care about doing the right thing."

"I do," Foggy said.

"Then why is that woman defending Fisk? What is she doing here? How long did it take you to spill your guts about Hoffman and Fisk to her? What, did you get in over your head and go running to mommy for help?" Brett demanded to know. "Are you on Fisk's payroll too?"

"Are you kidding me?" Foggy asked. "I would never do that. I don't know why she's here. I didn't ask her to do anything for me, Brett. You have to believe me!"

"I don't know who to believe anymore, man. I believed in half the guys in my precinct and look how that turned out. And I didn't know that they were snakes. You, though..."

"Brett," said Matt. "I know that you're upset, but don't be ridiculous. Am I on Fisk's payroll? Think about how that sounds."

"You don't know him," Brett told Matt. "And honestly I don't know you, Matt. Not really. I'm out of here."

Brett left, just as Karen came back.

"Was that Brett?" Karen asked. "What happened?"

Foggy couldn't look either of them in the eye. "I'm gonna..." he said, but Matt stopped him.

"No," Matt said. "I'm going to call the DA. And then book a meeting with Hoffman. You just... I don't know."

"Matt," Foggy said, "You don't honestly believe..."

"No," Matt said. "Of course not. But I think that you should go home, Foggy. I think you're too close to everything right now."

"And you're not?" Foggy asked.

"Go home," Matt replied firmly.

"Wait, what?" Karen asked as Foggy packed up his things angrily. "Matt, are you serious?"

"Leave it alone, Karen," Matt said, and he walked into his office and shut the door behind him.


	8. Blow Up

Anna stilled in the darkened hallway, listening closely. She had only gotten up to go to the bathroom and hadn't expected anyone else in the house to be awake. It was 4am. But she could hear the tap tap tap of fingers on a keyboard coming from the living room, see the vague light of the laptop screen reflecting on the wood-paneled hallway wall.

"Frankie?" she asked quietly, so as not to disturb anyone in the rest of the house.

He was muttering to himself and intensely focused on the screen in front of him. As she approached the living room, she could see books strewn across the coffee table and a mug balanced precariously near it's corner. Next to the mug was a bottle of pills, although Anna couldn't make out what exactly they were.

"Frankie, sweetheart, what are you still doing up?" Anna asked. "Don't you have school in the morning?"

Finally, the boy looked up at her, jittery and alert. "Don't worry about it, Anna. I'll be fine. I have to get this done."

His hands twitched with the desire to press his fingers back onto the keyboard, to keep going. His right leg moved restlessly up and down.

"It's 4am," Anna told him. "You're a growing teenager. Believe me, you need to sleep."

"I said don't worry about it, Anna. It's none of your business, alright?" Franklin told her angrily. He had no intention of listening to her. She sighed and went to the bathroom, resolving to talk to Eddie in the morning about his son's night owl tendencies and the bottle of pills that she'd seen.

* * *

The next morning, Anna observed Franklin carefully. He  woke at his usual early hour, and seemed to be behaving normally as he got his things together to go meet his car and head to school. He didn't seem tired at all.

"Aren't you going to eat anything, Frankie?" she asked him as she saw him move towards the door.

"Huh?" Franklin said absentmindedly. "Oh, I'm not hungry." And he left.

Anna took a moment to try and remember the last time that she had seen her stepson eat. He had stopped sitting down for dinner with them, preferring instead to cook his own meals and eat in his bedroom at his desk. She could tell that he had lost weight, and he seemed to be constantly on edge, nervous and under pressure. It worried her.

"Eddie," she asked her husband as he sat down at the breakfast table. "Have you noticed anything strange about Frankie lately?"

"That kid's always been strange," Eddie said. "Too much like his mother. You know that."

Anna sighed. She wished that Eddie wouldn't compare Franklin to his mother so much. It added to the distance between them and made the situation worse than it had to be. "It's more than that. Has he been eating? I caught him up at 4am last night working on his schoolwork. There was a pill bottle out. I'm trying to remember what the warning signs were for drug abuse that Candace's school did that presentation on? He's been pushing himself so hard and I'm getting very worried. You should talk to him."

"And say what exactly?" Eddie said. "You know he doesn't listen to a word I say."

"So you're just not even going to try?" Anna asked him. "Eddie, he's your son. You need to do something. What if he's in some kind of trouble? Or having difficulty at school? We're his parents. We should know these things."

Eddie sighed. "Alright," he said. "I'll talk to him. I can't promise it'll do any good, but I'll try."

* * *

Franklin came through the apartment door exhausted. His prescription for his Adderall had been waiting to be refilled and he hadn't been able to find the time until he'd run out, and so he'd finally had to have Reynaldo run him to a pharmacy on the way home from school. He'd taken them, but they hadn't kicked in yet, and he was waiting for that rush to come on so that he could spend the night studying for his calculus exam in the morning.

He should have felt more prepared than he was and he knew it. But Marci's 16th birthday had been the weekend before, and so all thoughts of studying had fallen away in favor of a two-day bender spent high on MDMA with Marci at his side, the two of them barely leaving the bed in her mother's tiny apartment. It was a consolation prize to make up for the weekend that he didn't get to have with Rosalind, the third in a row that she had cancelled. He understood. She was involved in a long and difficult trial defending one of Boston's most notorious Irish organized crime heads, finally apprehended after a 12 year manhunt. But it still stung that the only way he had been able to see his mother in the last two months had been by watching the trial coverage on CourtTV. She wasn't even taking his calls and he was tired of talking to her through David.

He came in to find Anna cooking dinner at the stove. "Hi honey," she said.

He just dumped his bags on the kitchen floor, fell into a chair and lay his head down on the kitchen table with a groan.

"Tired?" Anna asked, ruffling his hair. "I guess so. You were up late last night."

"Well, yeah," Franklin said, lifting his head to scowl at her. "I have exams."

"Still," Anna said, "Being tired won't make them any easier."

He didn't respond. He didn't feel like he could move.

"A letter came for you today," Anna said, pointing at the pile of mail on the table. "It looked very official."

Franklin looked up at her, not comprehending what she was saying, and so she handed the letter to him. He took it, and his eyes widened.

"Oh, God," he said. "My SAT scores. I thought for sure Rosalind would have had a way to find out the scores before they came to me."

"Well..." Anna said, "How did you do?"

Franklin didn't want to open them.

"Awww, are you nervous? I bet you did well," Anna said. "You're so smart. And you studied so hard. What are you nervous about?"

Franklin gulped as he remembered how hard he had studied. Anna and his dad didn't even know about all the extra hours he'd spent at the public library when they thought he was out with friends. He had gotten tired of hearing them tell him that he needed to pace himself or that he didn't need to worry so much.

They didn't know about the sleepless nights, the dizziness and faint feelings that overcame him when he went long hours studying without eating or stopping.

And they had no idea that he'd spent the morning of the test vomiting in the school bathroom, or that he'd sat through the entire test barely able to read what was in front of him because his vision was blurred and he worried he was going to pass out. He was barely able to even get through all the questions in front of him within the allotted time. He'd choked. He knew it.

Slowly, with trembling fingers, he opened the envelope and unfolded the paper inside. His heart sunk as he read the number there. 1260. The bottom 25%. Goodbye Ivy League colleges. Maybe goodbye to college at all. Everything he'd been working for meant nothing.

In his head, he heard Rosalind's angry diatribe as she told him how disappointing he was, how much of a waste of her time, energy, and money he had been all along. "I shouldn't have expected any better," she said. "You're your father's son after all. I don't know why I bothered."

He felt wet tears trying to escape the corners of his eyes, and he stiffened and told himself he wasn't going to cry. It wouldn't do any good at this point.

"Oh sweetie..." he heard Anna say with pity in her voice. "Is it that bad?"

"Don't talk to me," he told her. "Just don't..." He threw the letter on the table and ran to the bathroom as quickly as he could, sobbing as his empty stomach heaved up bile and pills.

He felt Anna move behind him. She put her hand on his back and rubbed it gently, but he bristled. "Fuck off, Anna!" he yelled, his throat raw. "Get the hell away from me!"

She left.

* * *

By the time he came out the bathroom, Anna was gone. But his dad was sitting at the kitchen table with a tense look on his face. He was holding the letter.

"That's mine," Franklin said.

"The words you're looking for are 'I'm very, very sorry'," said his dad.

"I know the scores are bad. So bad. Apocalyptically bad," Franklin said, his voice drained of all emotion.

"You really think that's what you should be sorry for?" his dad asked. "You made Anna cry, Frankie! She's been really worried about you lately and you treated her like she was dirt underneath your shoe. You don't get to talk to her like that."

"Are you for real right now?" Franklin asked. "I got a 1260 on my SATs. I know that you don't give a shit about my education or my future, but do you even understand what I'm going through right now? Boo hoo. Anna's upset. My life is over."

"Oh, kid, you are pushing your luck," his dad said. "Your life is not over. You are 16 years old, and you'll land on your feet. Hell, you can take the test again next year! What matters is that you can't walk around acting like you're the most important person in the universe! Where the hell did you learn that it's okay to treat people like that? Oh, wait, I know exactly where you got it from."

"Right," Franklin said, "because that's always what it's about, isn't it? I remind you of her. I remind her of you. It's always you or her. And it's never me. Never what I'm going through. You hate that I love her more than you. You hate that you can't give me the things that she can. Well whose fault is that? Maybe if I hadn't had to spend time I could have been studying worrying about your store or watching your daughter or if I'd had my own room to study in, I wouldn't have done so poorly. You have no idea how much I put up with living here, how much I hate it. How much I hate you!"

"Well why don't you just go live with your mother then? Oh, now I remember. You can't. Because Saint Rosalind, the woman who gives you so much, doesn't want you. Never wanted you. Everything you have is there because I forced her in a court of law to give it to you," his dad said. "She loves showing up and playing the hero, buying your love with her money, but at the end of the day where the hell is she, Frankie? Why would she let you live here, if I'm really so terrible? You wanna go live with her? That's great! You go do that! Because we don't want you around any more than you want to be here at this point."

"Yeah?" Franklin asked, furious. He ran to his room and pulled his suitcases out of the closet, began throwing clothes and other items into them.

"Hell yeah!" his dad said. "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out! Just don't be surprised if she sends you right back though. She's not who you think she is, kid, and if you want to have to learn it the hard way then be my guest."

"Fine, then!" Franklin yelled. "I'll tell you the same thing I told Anna. You can fuck off. I'm so done with this!" He grabbed his school bags and tore down the stairs to the street, suitcases thumping on every step.

* * *

Thankfully, Rosalind's doorman recognized him immediately when he arrived at her New York City apartment. The cab driver helped him unload his things and the doorman let him in but told him that he was going to have to alert Rosalind that Franklin was there. Franklin told him that it was fine. He'd already tried to call Rosalind in the cab, but had gotten her voicemail. He'd left a message telling her that he and his dad had fought and that he was heading to her place to stay.

The adrenaline of the situation carried him all the way to Rosalind's uncomfortable white leather sofa, where the enormity of everything that had happened finally hit him and he collapsed, laying there struggling to breathe as the panic overtook him.

He was so tired. And so angry. And so anxious. His body trembled and he felt hazy from the powerful stew of contradictory and overwhelming emotions flooding through him.

His phone rang. It was David.

"Hello," Franklin said.

"Franklin, it's David calling from your mother's office," he heard. David always said this, ever the professional, even though Franklin had caller ID and knew who he was.

"I'm calling to let you know that your mother is in court for the next three days and so she'll be unavailable to address your unfortunate situation," David continued. "However, she's asked me to tell you to stay at her apartment and finish your exams. There's no groceries currently, but your mother has a standing delivery order with Direct to Home groceries that I'm going to place for you tonight, so expect that to be there by tomorrow afternoon. You can use your AMEX to order delivery tonight. I've already let Reynaldo know that you're not at home so he'll pick you up from there in the morning. I've booked you a 10am flight out from JFK to Logan Airport on Saturday morning. A driver will pick you up. After that, you are welcome to stay at her apartment here until she's able to find the time to make other arrangements with you. Does that sound alright?"

"Yeah," Franklin said. "That sounds great, David. Thank you."

"Just doing my job, kid," he said. "Do you need anything else?"

"No," Franklin said, "I'm good."

David hung up and Franklin sat up and looked around. He hadn't lied. Suddenly, he did actually feel good. Great, even. Because it occurred to him that maybe this was a fresh start. He could live with Rosalind. And he could explain to her that this poor SAT scores were his dad's fault, and retake the test his senior year. And he could be who she wanted him to be, who he wanted to be, for the first time.

It felt like everything might actually be okay. So he popped another Adderall, and he pushed the pang in his chest that felt bad about hating his dad and Anna, that missed his sister, away. He had to. They didn't want him anyway.


	9. Confrontations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So because I love all of my commenters so much and I felt so bad that I have let other stories distract me for the last few days... here... have a second chapter today! :D

Matt sat unhappily in the chair across from the DA, Jack Kendall, trying to be patient while the man finished his phone call. He didn't know how this conversation was going to go and it terrified him. He had alerted the DA to what he had heard about Hoffman and his credibility, and the man had asked him to come in. He suspected it wasn't to thank him.

Finally, the DA ended his call and directed his attention towards Matt.

"So, Mr. Murdock," he said, "Based on our previous conversation, I'm assuming that you know that I didn't call you with good news."

"I had a suspicion," said Matt.

"Yes, well, while we thank you for letting us know that your client's testimony has come under scrutiny, we did expect it. It's not unusual, especially when the testimony in question essentially underpins every fact of the case," Kendall continued. "However, we were were hoping that you and your partner could provide us with some assistance in backing up Mr. Hoffman's story and ensuring that we understand it. Ms. Sharpe is famous for her cross-examinations. We need to be prepared for anything."

"Oh?" said Matt. "We've told you everything we know, and anything further would be protected by attorney-client privilege and is between us and Mr. Hoffman. It's him you should be questioning, Mr. Kendall, not me."

"This isn't actually about Mr. Hoffman," the DA said. "This is about your firm's association with the man in the mask. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, or Daredevil as they're now calling him."

Matt was glad that his glasses often prevented people from being able to read his facial expressions accurately. He knew that the shock and surprise must have registered on his face at the question.

"Association?" he asked. "What makes you think that we know anything about him?"

"Well," said Kendall, "Despite Mr. Nelson's initial claim that Mr. Hoffman simply wished to unburden himself, he is now making an altogether different claim. While he still maintains that the man in the mask rescued him, he is now also claiming that it was that same mystery man who convinced him to testify and who told him which cop to confess to and which lawyers to call."

Matt took a moment to think on his feet and come up with an answer that would hold up to close scrutiny. "Clearly," he said carefully, "Mr. Nelson and I had been building a reputation for honesty and fairness in the time since we opened our doors. Daredevil must have heard of us."

"You'd only taken on three cases," Kendall said. "That's quite the reputation."

"Given that one of those cases was that of Karen Page, whom Daredevil had previously helped to break the Union Allied story, and of Elena Cardenas, who was also so closely linked to Fisk's criminal activity," Matt said, "it's not surprising that we might be on his radar. He was clearly involved with trying to take down Fisk's criminal enterprises just as we were."

"He was," Kendall said, "and that's actually the big problem for us. Because nobody knows who he is and nobody can speak to his motives, it's going to be easy for the defense to make him a scapegoat. Which they are already doing in the press, and not without some success. Daredevil is a vigilante. He was potentially involved with the Russians, and there are links between him and the Chinese heroin trade and the Yakuza. We can connect him to a half-dozen deaths at least, including that of your client Mr. Healy and Mrs. Cardenas' murderer. While Hoffman claims that it was Fisk's men who shot Blake and his fellow officers, original reports did have the masked man as the culprit. If Daredevil had it out for Fisk, it's not a complete stretch to argue that potentially the whole thing was a set-up, that if Daredevil could convince Hoffman to testify against Fisk to begin with than he could also convince him to lie for him. We've got a lot of desperate criminals willing to testify who are pissing their pants in fear of the guy, and we've got absolutely nothing to back up the fact that the coercion happening is legitimately on the side of the truth."

"No?" Matt asked. "It seems to me that you should be able to spit and hit dozens of people whose lives Daredevil has saved."

"Maybe," said Kendall, "but that might just be exactly what Rosalind Sharpe wants. We start putting them on the stand and suddenly it's Daredevil on trial and not Fisk. What a spectacle that would be, and what a complete diversion from Fisk's guilt."

"So what does that mean for my client?" Matt asked.

"It means that, if you and your partner really don't know why Daredevil gave Mr. Hoffman your names, I would recommend that you refer him to another attorney," Kendall said. "I can guarantee you that if you stay on as his representation, Ms. Sharpe will imply that you and your partner were working with Daredevil as part of a larger conspiracy against Mr. Fisk. Your other connections to the case, to the documents from Landman and Zack, to Mr. Healy and Mrs. Cardenas and Ms. Page, will almost certainly become a problem. May still be one, even if you do remove yourselves from the equation. Who knows? Fisk's defense may choose to call you to the stand to assist with their argument."

Matt's hands clutched the armrests of his chair, instinctively wanting to ball themselves into fists as his entire body tensed in anger. "Of course," he said, struggling to say the words. "We want to do what's best for our client in the long run and have no interest in aiding with Fisk's defense or obstructing his prosecution."

"Excellent," said Kendall, "and if you do think of any other reason why Daredevil would have given your name to Hoffman, please let us know, Mr. Murdock. The more information we have to work with, the less likely we are to be blindsided later on or have to deal with an appeal when new information comes to light. We wouldn't want that, now would we?"

Matt felt as though all of the air had just been sucked from the room. Did even the DA believe that there was a chance that Fisk was being set up and that he and Foggy were a part of it? Or did they suspect that he was involved with Daredevil? What if they did get called to testify? He and Foggy having to answer questions about Daredevil under oath was like something right out of one of Matt's nightmares. "As I said, Mr. Kendall, we've provided you with all of the information we have. But I will discuss it with my partner and see if there's anything else we can think of. Thank you."

He left the room quickly, intending to find somewhere where he could let his rage loose. Instead, he nearly bumped into someone entering the DA's office after him. Rosalind Sharpe.

"Sorry," he said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, it's alright," Rosalind said. "I'd say that you should watch where you're going next time, but... well..."

He went to leave, but before he could, the woman stepped back in front of him. "You're Mr. Murdock, aren't you?" she said.

"And you're Rosalind Sharpe," he said back.

"You've heard of me, of course," she said. "Although whether or not it's by my legal reputation or through my son may make a big difference. He's not exactly my biggest fan, is he?"

"No," Matt said, "He's not. Did you want something from me, Ms. Sharpe?"

"Are you friends?" she asked.

Matt was confused. "Excuse me?"

"You and Franklin. Is that why he's so resistant to the job I offered him? If so, then could you tell him that there's room for both of you at Sharpe and Associates? If that's what it takes, then I'm willing to do it. I'm sure you're a more than capable lawyer and you would certainly help keep the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission off our backs, hmm? Seven figures? A big corner office with your name on it? I guess you won't be as interested in the view, but it's still very nice." She reached for his hand and put a business card in it.

"Talk to him," she said. "And then call me, Mr. Murdock. Your cooperation would not go unrewarded."

"No thank you," Matt said as politely as he could manage, and he tore the business card up in front of her. "Foggy," he said, emphasizing the name, "is my friend. And I trust his judgment when it comes to people, including you. Goodbye, Ms. Sharpe."

Once she entered the office, he nearly tripped over his cane all but running to the bathroom. He spent a few minutes dry heaving into the sink and splashed some water on his face, willing himself to calm down. He left holding onto his bruised and scraped knuckles, hoping desperately that nobody paid enough attention to know what time the mirror inside had been cracked.

* * *

The knock on Foggy's door was sad in how tentative it was. Matt didn't know if Foggy would even answer, if he would want to talk to him after what had happened with Brett. But he waited. And soon enough, he heard footsteps from inside, felt the vibration of the deadbolt moving, and the door opened. Only a crack. The chain was still in place.

"It's me," Matt said. "Can I come in?"

"I don't really want to talk to you right now," Foggy said.

"So you're going to keep ignoring me?" Matt said. "I talked to the DA today. And Rosalind."

The door swung wide open, and Matt entered Foggy's apartment.

"What?" Foggy said. "What did they say? Why were you talking to Rosalind?" He threw himself down onto the living room sofa.

"The DA suggested that we recuse ourselves as Hoffman's attorneys," Matt said. "Apparently Rosalind's defense is going to be to suggest that Daredevil has it out for her client and is setting him up, and that we're part of it given that Daredevil told Hoffman to come to us."

"What?" Foggy asked. "Jesus! What did you tell him?"

"I told him that we had no idea why Daredevil gave Hoffman our names, that it was probably because of the work we were doing on the tenement case and because of Karen," Matt said, "and that we would be happy to refer our client to someone else."

"What? Why?" Foggy asked.

"Because if we don't do that then there's a good possibility that our being Hoffman's lawyers will get in the way of the DA's case," Matt said, "and even the potential that Rosalind might call us to the stand to testify."

"Shit," Foggy said. "Goddammit! I told you! Oh God... we're going to be disbarred. You're going to go to jail and it's all going to come out. I can't even..." Foggy keeled over and began having a panic attack.

"Foggy," Matt said gently, sitting down next to his friend, "It's going to be okay." He put his hand on Foggy's shoulder to try and steady him. "I'm not going to let any of that happen. This is my fault, and I'm going to fix it. But first..."

Foggy leaned back, his breathing somewhat more regular and looked at Matt. "Matt..." he said, trying to stop the man from continuing.

"...first I need you to tell me the truth about Rosalind. I need to know why you hid it from me. I can't do this alone, Foggy. I told myself after everything that happened that I wouldn't go down that road again. I need you with me on this. I'm not mad, I promise, only confused. Please, Foggy. Talk to me."

"You talked to her?" Foggy asked.

"More like she talked to me. She told me to tell you that if your friendship with me was what was stopping you from taking the job she offered you that she was willing to hire me too," Matt said.

"I was going to tell you about that..." Foggy said, but Matt interrupted him.

"It's okay. I knew already," Matt told him. "I heard her car pull up to your building that night while I was out on the streets. I heard what she said to you. I'm sorry for eavesdropping. I couldn't help it."

Foggy sighed. "I meant it when I told you that I haven't spoken to her since I was 17. And I never lied to you about who my parents are. Anna is my mom, Matt. I love her. She raised me. She's the only mom I have that matters."

"Okay," Matt said. "I believe you, Foggy. But you did see Rosalind growing up?"

"She paid for everything. Made sure I was taken care of. I didn't lie. I want you to know that. I did grow up in Hell's Kitchen. But..."

"But?" Matt asked.

"I went to private school," Foggy explained. "Spent a lot of time with her at her penthouse or in Boston. Traveled a lot. I was never exactly the working class kid I pretended to be. I'm sorry."

"Do you think I care about that, Foggy?" Matt asked. "It doesn't matter. You're my friend now. The past is the past. What happened when you were 17?"

"I started to realize things about her," Foggy said. "Things about the kind of person she was, the clients she worked with, and what she did for a living. I started to question how she treated people. How she treated me. We had a falling out. I mean, you met her. She's... difficult."

"That's the nice way of putting it," Matt said.

"Yeah," Foggy said, "Well, I just couldn't be around her anymore. She was toxic. She wanted to control my life and shape who I was and I didn't want to be who she wanted me to be, you know? So I told her off. And she cut the money off. My private school tuition. My college fund. All of it. And we never spoke again after that."

Matt knew that there was more to the story than that. There was something Foggy wasn't telling him, something that terrified the man and sat in the pit of his stomach like a stone. Matt could almost sense the weight of it, like it was a visceral thing. But he didn't tell Foggy that. He didn't need to know. Wasn't sure he wanted to.

"And now she's here to, what? Win you back? By blackmailing you into working for her?" Matt asked.

"It seems like it," Foggy said. "But I doubt that's all there is to it. She certainly doesn't miss me, like she's claiming. I honestly don't know why she's here, Matt. But I'm starting to think that taking her offer might be the only way to get us out of this. To make her go away."

"No," said Matt. "We'll find another way. I would never make you do that, Foggy. We're Nelson and Murdock. We'll solve this together. That's the way it's supposed to be."

"But if either of us get called to testify, Matt, what happens then? Or, worse, what if she actually gets Fisk off?" Foggy asked. "How do I live with that on my conscience?"

"It won't come to that," Matt said with certainty.

"How do you know?" Foggy asked.

"I have faith," Matt said.

"Well, your priest must be proud," Foggy said.

"Not in God," Matt said. "In us."

He picked up his briefcase and began to unload his laptop onto Foggy's coffee table. "Now," he told Foggy, "let's get to work."

"You're not going to go out on the streets tonight? Bust some heads?" Foggy asked.

"As much as I'd like to, it doesn't seem to be helping," Matt said, "And besides, after what the DA told me today I wouldn't put it past Rosalind to have someone following us. It's too risky. I told you once that Daredevil was needed when law met reality. Well, reality doesn't seem to have any bearing on what's happening right now. So, law it is. Let's look through the documents Marci gave us for connections again. There's got to be something there that can connect the dots without needing Hoffman."

"Okay," Foggy said, a smile creeping onto his face. "But let's call Karen and see if she wants to help, okay? I know her. She'll be pissed if we leave her out, and she's good at this kind of thing."

"Yeah," said Matt, smiling too. And he felt a sliver of hope, like everything might actually be okay.


	10. Responsibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the short chapter. I've just had a lot of other things going on that have been distracting me from fic-writing, but I wanted you all to know that I'm still here, plugging away!
> 
> Also, I have a fanfiction podcast starting soon! The website is [here.](http://otpodcast.tumblr.com) Please check it out and if you're interested, follow us on Tumblr, Facebook or Twitter! And tell your friends! I'm really excited about it and I think it's going to be awesome. :D

It took two full weeks before Franklin finally saw his mother for the first time since he stormed out of his father's apartment. By that point, it had been months since he last saw her. All he wanted was to talk to her, to explain what had happened and hear her tell him that everything was going to be alright, that he could stay with her and that they could fix things together. Instead, he spent his days alone in her apartment, on the phone to Marci or watching television, waiting.

When she did finally arrive home at her Boston apartment one evening, the reaction that Franklin got was not what he expected.

He had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the television when he heard the door open. She was on the phone, and as she entered the apartment she kicked her heels off but didn't turn on the light.

"I don't care if Martin doesn't agree. The paperwork was filed this morning, and the hearing date has been set already-" She noticed someone on the couch and stilled, removing the phone from her ear. Her body tensed and her hand moved to clutch her purse.

"Who the hell is there?" she asked coldly.

"It's just me, mom! Remember?" Franklin told her.

She breathed a sigh of relief. "For God's sake, Franklin, what the hell are you doing here?" she asked. She turned the light on finally.

Franklin sat up slowly, tired. "I've been staying here. I fought with dad? He kicked me out?"

"Kicked you out?" Rosalind asked. "He most certainly did not! When?"

Franklin was confused. Hadn't David told her what had happened? "Two weeks ago, mom! I called David and he said you knew."

"Right," she said. "I've been busy. Well, let's get this sorted then. What happened?"

Franklin didn't want to tell her. Suddenly, all of his optimism that Rosalind would understand why his SAT scores were low or that she would want him there evaporated. Panic surged in his body. He didn't say anything.

"Franklin," Rosalind said, "You are going to tell me what happened with your father right now."

"I finally told him off," Franklin told her, exaggerating slightly so she'd be less angry. "I was upset because my SAT scores came in and they... well, they weren't good. And he didn't care. So I told him the truth. That is was his fault. That he wasn't creating the kind of atmosphere I needed to be successful. That I wasn't going to watch the store or Candace for him anymore. And he flipped out on me."

"How bad were they?" Rosalind asked. Of course she would zero in on that aspect of what he said.

He didn't respond.

"Franklin? Tell me." Rosalind said again.

"1260," he replied finally.

"12-" Rosalind said, cutting herself off and shaking her head with a sigh. "That is..."

"Bad. I know," Franklin said. "But it wasn't my fault."

"Oh? Did your father take the test for you then?" Rosalind asked.

"No!" he replied. "But..."

"Don't you dare try and blame what happened on anyone but yourself, Franklin," she said coldly. "I spend my living making excuses for people and I have no interest in hearing any from my own son. Your father didn't take that test. You did. He may be a miserable failure, but he isn't the failure here. Take responsibility for your own actions and do what you have to do to fix things. Tomorrow, I'm going to call a tutor to prep you over the summer so that you can take the test again next year. And you're going to call your father and apologize."

"What?" Franklin asked. "Why? Why can't I just stay here?"

Rosalind laughed. "I'm working, Franklin," she said. "On a very important case. I don't have time to babysit you. And besides, that wasn't what we agreed to. I booked some time later in the summer once my case is over for us to head up to the Vineyard. We'll be together then."

"But I hate it there. I hate him," Franklin said. "I want to stay with you."

"Well consider this an important lesson. We don't always get what we want in this life," Rosalind said.

Franklin felt like he had been hit by a truck. He hadn't expected Rosalind to respond this way. Another rejection. It stung. He could feel tears welling up in the corner of his eyes.

"You know, dad said that you would do this," he spit at Rosalind. "He said that you didn't want me, that you never wanted me. I guess I should have listened to him."

He watched the way Rosalind's entire body stiffened and suspected that he had said the right thing to get what he wanted.

"Your father shouldn't be talking to you about me that way," Rosalind said. "He never understood me when we were together and he certainly doesn't know a damned thing about who I am now. But I see what you're trying to do, Franklin. And it changes nothing. You will call him tomorrow."

"Please," Franklin begged, changing tactics and letting the tears fall. It was cathartic, but also useful. "Please, mom, don't make me go back. In the fall I will, but please, can't I stay for the summer. I'll stay out of your way, I promise. You won't even know I'm here. I just can't... I can't go back there. They hate me. They don't want me. Nobody does."

"Oh, don't cry, Franklin, honestly..." Rosalind said, but she reached out and uncharacteristically rubbed her hand on his back. It felt wonderful, and he leaned into it but knew better than to try and hug her. He would take what he could get.

"Okay," Rosalind finally said. "For the summer. But you need to understand that I will not be here, and that when I am I will be working and need to be left to it. You'll also have to join me in court. I have no intention of leaving you to your own devices and letting you do whatever you feel like. And I may need you to come with me to certain parties and events that I'm obligated to attend. You can be my plus one. It will be a good networking opportunity for you, actually."

She stood up and he breathed an enormous sigh of relief.

"But don't think for a second that I don't see right through what you just did there," she said. "I don't appreciate being manipulated, Franklin. It had better not happen again."

"It won't," Franklin promised. "Thank you, mom."

"Do me a favour and don't sleep on the sofa. Take the blankets to your room. Good night, darling."

"Good night," he said, flopping back down onto the pillow for a moment as she turned the light out and left the room. He'd won the battle. Now he just had to figure out how he was going to win the war.


	11. To Want More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhh... so I don't know about this chapter, you guys. I'm really nervous about it because I'm not sure if I pulled it off or not. You'll have to let me know. It kind of got away from me, but I hope in a good way.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like it.

Matt was beyond frustrated. He felt like the work he had done as the Devil had sucked him into a literal hell - a Kafka-esque nightmare of legal contradictions and warped logic that altered reality and left him as the only one who knew the truth. Well, he and Karen and Foggy. The three of them had spent the last two weeks hunkered over their conference table going over every line of Marci's documents from Landman and Zach, every newspaper clipping or clue that Ben Urich had left them in one of his final acts, and every note they had taken on Elena's tenement case or Healy's murder charge. They were looking for something, anything, that could prove with no corroboration from Hoffman that Fisk was the man responsible for everything that had happened. Something that Rosalind couldn't have thrown out, that couldn't be pinned on Daredevil instead. And they had come up with nothing. Nothing substantive enough to stick, to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. It was maddening.

They had turned the television off and refused to turn it back on. Having it on was only serving to discourage them. The press was slowly being fed stories by Fisk's defense team, and the tide was turning. Daredevil was once again being painted as a dangerous vigilante with unclear motives. And Fisk was being held up as an example of a noble man being judged as guilty until proven innocent, a philanthropist who made enemies who now wanted to take him down. Even his escape was being questioned, as people wondered whether or not it was planned by him or staged by someone else. Rosalind was ruthless, and she played dirty, which shouldn't have shocked Matt the way that it did. He knew the clients she took on and he had heard the rumors about her, even if he still couldn't get Foggy to open up about his childhood with her.

And in the meantime, Matt couldn't go out at night. He couldn't release the tension the way that he had come to rely on. Foggy wasn't wrong about Rosalind having them followed. The very night that he went to Foggy's after speaking with the DA, Matt sensed a presence stalking him, likely hired muscle. Foggy was being followed too. Going out would risk exposure, and that was the only thing that terrified Matt more than the thought of Fisk out on the streets again.

But the urge to crack skulls, to feel the blood drip from his fingers, to beat satisfying answers our of people who deserved it, was so strong. Every moment that he was Matt Murdock and not the Devil, people got hurt. Matt could hear the sirens becoming louder and more frequent. He could hear the screams and cries for help of a city increasingly in turmoil, even with Fisk behind bars. Someone was filling the void Fisk had left. Matt could sense it, and it ate at him, made his stomach churn and his heart race. And the longer things went on, the stronger the urge to go out became until Matt felt as though he were vibrating out of his own body with anticipation and desire.

Finally one night, in the middle of a marathon research session and well past the point when most of the people in the City that Never Slept were in bed, Matt's burner phone buzzed in his pocket. Foggy and Karen looked up at him. "Who's calling you at this hour?" Foggy asked.

"And why do you have two phones?" Karen asked, gesturing to Matt's cell phone sitting on the table even though she knew he couldn't see her do it.

"I don't know," said Matt to Foggy. He ignored Karen's question. He would deal with that later. He excused himself, which he knew made Foggy uneasy, and answered the call in his own office.

"Who is this?" he asked, blunt due to the hour and knowing that the person called expecting Daredevil anyway.

"You... y... you promised," he heard a quiet voice say on the other end, stuttering and sobbing.

"Melvin," Matt said, recognizing who it immediately. "What happened?"

"Betsy..." Melvin cried out. "Oh, Betsy! You said she'd be safe. They... they took her." Matt could barely understand the man between choked sobs. "Liar," Melvin said. "You lied."

"Who?" Matt asked, upset. "Who took her, Melvin?"

"Fisk," Melvin told him. 

"Fisk is in jail, Melvin. It wasn't him. Who took her?" he asked.

"Fisk," Melvin told him again. "They said. They told me. It's my fault. I helped you and it's my fault. I did it. Oh God!"

"Melvin, you need to calm down," Matt said, anxious and confused. "What else did they tell you?"

"To call you," Melvin said. "To tell you that you can't win. Please help me! Please find Betsy!"

"I will, Melvin," Matt promised. "I will."

He hung up the phone and stood still for a moment, unsure if he could will his body to move and do what he knew he needed to do. Melvin had to be wrong. It couldn't be Fisk. He'd dismantled the man's empire. Whoever had taken Betsy was luring him into a trap.

But... Matt wondered. What if? What if Fisk's empire was slowly being put back together while he was awaiting trial, being kept warm for him in anticipation of his return? Even without the Kingpin in charge, there may have still been people out there in his pocket working on his behalf. Hoffman couldn't possibly have known the name of every person on Fisk's payroll.

And here Matt was, sitting in his office, cowering.

He'd had enough.

He walked back into the conference room and, before he could even say anything, Foggy was already shaking his head. 

"Nope," Foggy said. "No way, buddy. I don't know who that was and I don't care, but it is too risky for you to be..." he stopped as he realized that Karen's ears had perked up, "... going out on your own at this hour. I know that you hate it, but you're more vulnerable than other people right now and you know it."

"Foggy..." Matt said, his tone firm as he gathered his things to leave.

"Uh uh," Foggy said, and Matt felt a hand grip his wrist. "Can I talk to you for just a minute? Alone?"

"Wait a second, Foggy," Karen said, shaking her head in protest, "What is going on? I have a right to know. I'm a part of this."

"No, Karen," Foggy snapped back. "You're really not. Would you excuse us please?" He practically dragged Matt out of his room and into his own office and closed the door behind them.

"You can't go out. You know I'm right," Foggy said. "Rosalind has people on both of us. What if she figures out what you're doing?"

"Somebody kidnapped Betsy Beatty, Melvin Potter's parole officer," Matt told Foggy. "They did it to send me a message, Foggy. I think Fisk might still be acting as the Kingpin from jail somehow."

"What?" Foggy asked. "That's..." he trailed off in confusion. "Did they do it to send you a message or lure you into a trap, Matt? Because either way you would be stupid to take that bait."

"I promised Melvin that I'd keep her safe, Foggy," said Matt. "I have to go."

"But you can't!" Foggy said.

"It'll be okay, Foggy," Matt said. "I'm going to go out the window and keep to the rooftops, lose the tail and make them think I'm still here while I pick up my costume."

"And if they've bugged us? If they've somehow heard everything we've been talking about? Why did you even have that burner phone on you? Jesus, Matt!" Foggy said, "Do you know what will happen if Rosalind finds out..."

"No," said Matt, opening his office window, "But it seems like maybe you do, don't you? She's your mother after all, isn't she? So why don't you tell me? What will happen, Foggy?"

"I don't know," said Foggy.

"I think you do," Matt said. "And you don't want to talk about it. And that's fine. But I'm not afraid of her. You stay here with Karen. Tell her I went to meet a woman I'm seeing."

"Right," Foggy said, exasperation in his voice, "Because that makes total sense and won't make her suspicious at all. Thanks for leaving me to deal with that."

"I'm sorry," Matt said genuinely, putting a leg out onto the window ledge and gripping a nearby eaves-trough. "But you know I have to do this. I'll call you later."

And with that, he was gone.

Foggy sighed heavily and headed back towards the conference room. He wasn't surprised to find a very pissed off Karen pacing there with her arms crossed.

"What the hell was that about?" she asked.

"Don't worry about it, Karen," he told her.

"Is Matt gone? What did he do, jump off the fire escape?" Karen said. "Jesus! You two must really think I'm stupid."

"Oh, what is that supposed to mean?" Foggy asked, frustrated and not sure how to deal with the situation.

"Matt has a burner phone to take anonymous phone calls on. For months now he's been showing up every day with bruises or cuts, or limping like he's injured himself. Except for the days he doesn't show up at all and you're clearly covering for him," Karen explained. "And except for the last few weeks when we've been putting in the extra hours trying to help put Fisk away. The same few weeks that Daredevil has mysteriously vanished from the streets, despite the increased public interest in spotting him." 

Foggy stilled, realizing where Karen was going with her train of thought. "What exactly are you saying Karen?"

"Are you really going to stand here and keep lying to me, Foggy?" Karen asked angrily. "Keep expecting me to put up with it. When I first met you and Matt, I appreciated the fact that you both seemed so honest and so committed to being decent human beings. But now I'm starting to see that I was wrong about you both. Don't you trust me?"

"Do you want the truth?" Foggy asked.

"Yes, I want the truth!" Karen replied back.

"No," Foggy said. "I don't trust you, Karen. That's the truth! You stand here and think you can demand answers from me? You barely know me! Or Matt! Hell, I barely know Matt! And we both barely know you! How dare you be pissed off at me because I'm not the decent human being you assumed I was! Since Elena died, since Ben, you've been coming in here smelling of booze every day and crying in the kitchen when you think Matt and I can't hear you. And making excuses to stay late and avoid going home again. So what makes you think that you're entitled to know anything more about us than you already do when we've taken you in, we've given you a job and a home and called you family, and you're still lying to us! The truth, Karen, is that we're all just a collection of fucked up strangers who somehow found each other, and that's all we get. That's all this is. Stop expecting it to be anything more than that. I had to learn that the hard way and now you do too."

By the end of his speech, he was shaking from a combination of anxiety and exertion, his eyes looking anywhere but at her, not wanting to see the fury and rejection written on her features. He heard her sniffle. He'd made her cry. He tensed in anticipation of the upset tirade he knew was coming his way from her, but it didn't happen. Instead, he was shocked when she launched herself forward and pulled him into a desperate hug, clinging to him and sobbing into his shoulder, his suit damp with snot and tears. He tentatively put an arm around her and hugged her back, letting her get it out.

"I'm sorry," he said sadly. "I'm sorry."

"I know," Karen said, "I know."

She pulled back from him and gently took his chin in her hands, tilting his face so that he was forced to look at her. Her eyes were red and shining with tears. Foggy found her to be more beautiful than he'd ever seen her, which disturbed him slightly.

"You're right," she said. "I don't know you. And you don't know me. But even if we don't know each other, we need each other, Foggy. I need you. Please." She started to cry again. "You're all I have."

"You're all I have too," Foggy confessed.

"So let's make it more," Karen said. "We deserve more, don't we?" And she leaned in and closed the distance between them, kissing him gently with lips that were salty with the taste of her tears.

He knew it was a mistake, but he deepened the kiss anyway. He'd wanted this from the moment he'd met her. Never like this, but how could he have ever expected this anyway? 

"Take me home, Foggy," she begged.

And so he did.


	12. Things Are Looking Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I apologize for the delay. I know that I left things in the present day on kind of a cliffhanger.
> 
> So here, have another chapter of the younger Franklin and Rosalind. Because I'm mean that way.
> 
> Also, the first episode of my new fanfiction podcast The OTP drops on Tuesday! Check it out [here](http://otpodcast.tumblr.com).

As the summer progressed, Franklin grew increasingly relieved and became convinced that his decision to come to stay with Rosalind had been the right one. He spent a great deal of his time being a constant presence at her side as she argued in court and made appearances on the Boston political and social scene. He enjoyed walking into a room with her and having all eyes turn to them, getting to be introduced as her son and be told how handsome he was, how polite. Loved the late nights spent with her bent over thick legal texts in her living room helping her find particular cases to reference and double-checking the work that her clerks and assistants prepared, knowing that she trusted him more than anyone else. And he could tell that Rosalind was appreciating having him there more than she expected.

He was surprised by how often she began to call him throughout the day to vent about a particular person in her office or ensure that he was where he was supposed to be. Suddenly she was more available to him and David began to act less as their go-between. Once, when she had been practically living in the office for a particularly long stretch of time, she even brought home a whole marble cheesecake and ate it with him at her coffee table at 3am, peppering him with questions about his SAT prep course, drivers-ed classes and fall plans. It took him ten minutes of watching her eat it for him to realize that she intended for him to have some too. She made a joke about him needing to do extra laps in the pool the next day to burn it off but otherwise didn't insult his weight or make him feel bad about it at all. It might have disturbed him if he wasn't so genuinely happy to spend the time with her.

Her case dragged on. Apparently, defending a man who spent so many years evading justice was no easy thing, and getting the media to view him as anything less than a criminal mastermind was even harder. Franklin overheard Rosalind call so many reporters, give so many interviews, and negotiate with so many experts, advisers and politicians that it made his head spin. But the case was expected to be wrapped up by early August, at which point she told him that they would head to Martha's Vineyard for the rest of the summer and enjoy it in peace. He was looking forward to it. If he was already connecting with Rosalind on a deeper level than he ever had while he lived with his dad, his imagination ran wild with the possibilities when it was just the two of them. He felt like he was finally where he belonged.

He received at least one missed call on his cell phone every day. He assumed that they were from Anna and not his dad, but he knew that his sister might also be trying to reach him, wondering what had happened to him. He didn't care. Life was good. He was hopeful that when fall rolled around, Rosalind wouldn't ask him to leave. Why would she? They seemed to be enjoying each other's company.

His instincts seemed right when in late July, following the successful completion of his driver's test, he arrived back at the apartment to find Rosalind standing outside of the building on her phone leaning against the hood of a brand new sleek, black Volkswagen Jetta. She looked up when she saw him get out of the car, telling the person she was speaking to to hang on.

"Well, what do you think, darling? Not bad for your first ride, hmmm?" she asked him.

He didn't know what to say. "Wow," was all he could come up with. She smiled at him, a sly half-smile, but to Franklin it may as well have been a proud ear-to-ear grin, and threw him the keys. Then, she went back to her phone call and moved to head back into the building.

All Franklin could think about was the fact that she had to have known that nobody needs a car in New York City. She wanted him to stay.

* * *

The night had been long, and the party boring. Franklin just wanted to leave. His starched suit itched at his skin, and the string quartet's sedate and measured performance was acting like aural Ambien. He felt like he might pass out right there at the table. But, just as he felt his eyes closing, he jolted himself back awake and resumed eating his salad, double-checking to make sure that he had the right fork in his hand. Rosalind would definitely notice if he wasn't exercising all of the proper table manners expected from him at an event so stuffy.

He looked around at the other diners eating with him at the long table, craned his neck to see the chandelier above him and the high ceilings of the cavernous dining room. The assemblage of politicians, judges and church leaders around him chattered softly to one another, networking and gossiping. And next to him, at the head of the table, sat his mother, looking as in command as ever. Her client, former fugitive Michael Kelly, sat next to her, a free man exhibiting all the smugness that his triumph in court afforded him.

On the other side of his mother's client sat the only person at the party who Franklin was even remotely interested in, the only other person his own age in attendance. Her name was Alice Kelly, and she was the devoted daughter of his mother's client.

Franklin had never spoken to Alice, but he was entranced by the mysteriousness of the raven-haired, petite girl who he often saw at his mother's office or at the seemingly never-ending evenings of schmoozing and networking that Rosalind dragged him to.

Just days earlier, she had testified sweetly on the stand about her father's love of his family and how he could never have hurt a fly, let alone been the head of Boston's most infamous Irish crime syndicate. In court, she had cried and begged the jury to have mercy on the man who had spent so long on the run because of accusations that weren't true, who had been unable to raise her and be there for her like every father should. The performance had been inspired. Franklin had watched it from the back row of the courtroom, enraptured by her transformation into such a picture of sweet virginal innocence as he pictured the steely, calculated young woman he knew from his conversations with his mother that she was. He considered her carefully as they locked eyes across the table.

She smiled coyly at him, quickly looking away when Rosalind caught them noticing each other.

Franklin felt the fury of his mother as she stared him down, warning him away from the object of his attention.

He knew that his mother probably knew best in this case, but as content as he was he was missing the company of anyone else his own age. Marci's father had relapsed again which made her busy with her own family drama. And he didn't have any other friends who he could call to come visit him in Boston.

When the dinner ended, the crowd began to mingle and a band began to play nearby. Franklin stood next to his mother until she became embroiled in a political conversation with a colleague and used the opportunity to slip away.

He was hovering near the bar wishing he was old enough to order a drink when he heard Alice approach.

"Hey," she said. "Franklin, right? Rosalind's son?"

"Yeah," he said. "Nice job. Testifying, I mean. I was there. You really made a big difference. The jury loved you." She was really beautiful and her attention was so focused on him that it was making him nervous.

"Thanks," she said. "Do you want to get out of here?" she asked.

"What?" Franklin asked, surprised.

"I saw a coat room on the way in. I bet nobody will even notice that we're gone. Are you interested? You can't tell me you'd rather hang out here?" she asked him.

"No," he said. "You're right. Sure. Why not?"

He followed her out, keeping one eye on Rosalind to make sure she was focused on her own conversation.

The second that the door was closed to the coat room, before they even switched the light on, Alice was on top of him, kissing him with a ferocity that nearly knocked him over. It surprised him, but he went with it and let her take the lead. Soon the two of them were panting and sweating on a pile of expensive furs.

"Oooookay," Foggy said, when it was over. "That was..." He tried to catch his breath.

"It was alright," said Alice. "I needed it though. You have no idea how hard it's been standing next to my dad for the last few weeks and trying to look happy about it."

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Well, yeah," she said. "You must get it. You can't possibly love hanging around your mom all the time? They're such assholes."

"Totally!" Franklin said halfheartedly, shaking his head emphatically to drive home the point. "They're awful. Soooo...?" he asked, hoping that she would tell him what should happen next. Despite his on again/off again relationship with Marci, he had never exactly been a lady-killer.

"So," she said. "We should get back in there. But we'll see each other again soon."

"We will?" he asked.

"Yeah," Alice told him. "My dad and I are coming out to stay with you guys for the rest of the summer. Didn't your mom tell you?"

"Yeah!" Franklin said, lying. "Right. She did. That's awesome!"

Alice just giggled and shook her head at him before standing up to find her underwear.

Franklin laid his head back down on the coat underneath him as she left and reflected on how perfect everything was.


	13. Two Traps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am very, very sorry for the long wait on this chapter. I have a bunch of WIPs on the go, and I have challenges I'm working on fics for (including one that I'm running) and the podcast I moderate. Plus, Jessica Jones! (And, oh yeah, I think I have an actual life with family and friends and a job that I fit in there somewhere too. lol) So it's a lot right now, but I did not forget about this fic.
> 
> This chapter was also just... difficult. And long. And tricky given that there's only a few chapters left and I needed to head towards the end game and set the sequel up. And I am not a lawyer, so dammit I hope the law stuff actually reads as not beyond ridiculous based on the small amount of research and resources I have access to and my love of TV crime dramas.
> 
> But I hope you like it! Update! Yay!
> 
> P.S. Comments are a really good way to incentivize me to keep going because they fuel me more than energy drinks or food ever could. :D

Of course it was a trap. Matt had known that from the moment Melvin had told him Betsy had been taken. Someone had obviously made the connection between Matt's costume and the reserved, strange armor designer and wanted to draw him out. Betsy's heartbeat was strong and her breathing heavy from where she sat tied to a chair in the abandoned warehouse. Her mouth was taped, but they hadn't hurt her. It was obvious that they were waiting for him.

But even though he knew it was a trap, he was puzzled. There were only four men guarding her. Hardly enough for an ambush. He reached out with his senses, but he couldn't sense anyone else in the surrounding area. And so he had no other option but to remain crouched on the roof of the warehouse, listening intently and waiting for the right moment to stage his rescue.

"The boss said he'd come," one of the four men guarding Betsy said. "What if they're too late? What if all this just pisses him off?" He voice was shaking, and Matt could smell his sweat. He was terrified. Good. Matt also now knew that someone else was coming. Maybe he was early.

"We just need to keep her here," one of the other men said. "Keep her here until he shows up, get everyone in one place. Follow our orders." He threw his cigarette butt onto the ground and paced, calm.

"Still though," the original man said, "I don't like being the fall guy like this."

"Relax," a third man said. "We're getting off easy here. Five years, tops. And then we're on easy street." Matt filed that away for later, unsure what it meant.

The fourth man only looked at his watch, his heart pounding furiously. Matt steeled himself, sensing that something was about to happen. Tick. Tick.

CRACK!

Matt had no time to react before a bullet slammed into his shoulder and the momentum propelled him forward through the roof skylight, and he gasped for breath as he fell and landed hard on the cement below at the feet of the four kidnappers, who immediately trained their guns on him. He rolled over, reaction time slowed, bruised and bleeding from cuts made by the glass but before he could make his move to get back up one of the guns was already in motion, the butt of it connecting with his head.

* * *

Foggy couldn't sleep, which was strange for him. Usually he was exhausted after sex, his entire body humming with contentment and satiation. Marci had often complained about it.

But not now. Now, he was wide awake, his mind racing, the regret mounting. It was always beautiful women. He joked about Matt's predilection for them, but if he were being honest with himself, they were always his downfall too. He and Karen were in this together now. They shared Matt's secret, shared the worry and now they'd shared their bodies with each other. It couldn't be undone. So what was going to happen next?

He turned his head to observe her next to him, one of her arms and a leg still slung across his body, her head nestled on his chest and her hair falling softly across his stomach. She looked so peaceful. His heart melted slightly at the sight. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen her that at ease when she was awake. In fact, the more he thought about it the more he realized that he may never have seen her that at ease. So much had happened to her since they had met. And none of it good.

He sighed and refocused himself on his bedroom ceiling, knowing that if he continued staring at her his inner monologue would talk him into something that he didn't think would be good for either of them. He tried to worry about Matt instead, which he took as a bad sign of the state of things.

He was startled when his phone began buzzing on the nightstand, then nervous when he saw that the call was from an unknown number. Matt's burner phone.

"Where are you, buddy?" he asked once he had accepted the call.

The voice that answered wasn't Matt.

"Who do you think I am right now, Franklin?" asked Rosalind's stern voice. "Your partner? I imagine he must get quite turned around sometimes."

He went to hang up, but before he could Rosalind surprised him. "I wanted to let you know that I just wrapped up my last piece of business related to the Fisk case," she said.

Foggy rolled over and leaned his head back against his pillow, breathing a sigh of relief. What was she playing at?

"And you called to tell me that you did it for me and request that I say thank you, is that it?" he asked. "Like you're doing me a favor by not ruining my life?"

"Well I did do it for you," she said. "But I don't expect a thank you, Franklin. I know you hate me. But the things I've done are for your own good, so you can be as ungrateful as you want as long as I know what I did and why. I don't need you to approve of the decisions I make."

"Why call to tell me, then?" Foggy asked. "I'm sure I'll hear all about it from the DA, or on the news like everyone else."

"I called to invite you for a drink," she told him.

"And why would I go for a drink with you?" he asked in return.

"Well, we have a lot to talk about," she said.

"Do we?" Foggy asked, heavy dread settling uncomfortably in his stomach.

"We do," she said. "You've been keeping some rather interesting company. And hiding some particularly dark secrets. Did you really think I wouldn't find out?"

Foggy gasped softly, the weight of things overwhelming him, paralyzing him. He didn't know what to say. He was such an idiot. He let Matt go out, and now they were both going to pay for it.

"The Plaza Hotel bar. Half an hour," Rosalind said when he didn't respond. "Take a cab. I'll pay for it. See you then."

* * *

Matt woke up slowly, sluggish and groaning. The first thing he took stock of was that his mask was still on. That was good. The second thing he noticed was that his arms were handcuffed behind the chair he was sitting on, and his legs were similarly bound. Not good.

As his senses came back to him, he became aware of other things. The smell of cigarette smoke, the feeling of it flooding his lungs secondhand. And a perfume, thick and heavy in the air, that smelled of jasmine and lemon. He knew that perfume. Who did he know who wore that perfume?

A hand on his cheek, soft and feminine, caressing it carefully with genuine affection.

"Finally," a voice said, accented and warm. "I've been waiting for you to wake up. I didn't want to start at a time when you couldn't feel the pain and understand why it was happening to you. Do you know who I am?"

"You're Wilson Fisk's girlfriend," Matt said, confused as the sounds and smells of the person in front of him finally coalesced into an image of sorts. He'd met her at the gallery. She'd had a gentle laugh and a way with words then.

Now, her voice was hard and raw with emotion as she told him "I'm the woman who will be his wife. You took my Wilson from me. All he ever wanted was to save this city that he loved so much, to be with me, and you took all of that away."

Matt hissed as the lit cigarette in her hands was slowly ground into his chin, the burning sensation flooding Matt's senses until everything whited out.

"You're going to pay," she said, "in blood." Her fingers moved from his face to his neck, one of the few places on his suit where the armor didn't protect him. She must have nodded, because one of the men in the room advanced towards him, the all too familiar metallic click of a switchblade being pulled out telling Matt he was in trouble.

Matt was afraid, but not afraid as he should have been. Because he could hear the sirens. Dozens of them, heading in his direction and only moments away. The warehouse was being raided. Someone had tipped them off that he was there, that Vanessa was there.

So he resolved to take the pain and wait for his moment to escape in the chaos. He listened carefully for the hum of the few light-bulbs keeping the warehouse dimly lit so that he would know where to aim the projectiles necessary to operate in the dark and have the advantage. He began moving his right thumb back and forth in the restraints, working to break it and allow him to slip out of the handcuffs. He just needed to take the pain for a moment before he would have the opportunity to get away, and Vanessa would be arrested, Betsy saved.

And as he did those things, as he breathed and tried to meditate past the pain of the knife cutting into his flesh as it slid up through his mask in an attempt to cut it away, he remembered what the guards had said, smelled the sweat of fear emanating from them. They knew. This was a set up.

By who and why were questions that would have to be saved for later.

* * *

The hotel bar was nearly empty when Foggy arrived, not surprising given the late hour but not always the case in a city like New York, and in a hotel as popular as the Plaza. Rosalind sat there calmly waiting for him, a folder in front of her on the bar and a glass of wine in one hand.

He tried to control his breathing, tried to pull himself together and not let her get to him before he'd even sat down, but he knew he was kidding himself. She'd been in control from before he'd even seen her on TV defending Fisk. She'd been in control his entire life, even in the years she wasn't there, like a shadow cast over him and everything he did.

He walked over and sat down. "Rosalind," he said.

She simply observed him carefully, taking in his flustered demeanor and thrown together outfit.

"What do you want? You called me here, remember?" he finally asked.

"Aren't you going to have a drink?" she asked.

"What?" he replied, confused.

"A drink. You know it occurs to me that we've never done this. Had a drink," she said. "You were so young the last time we spent any time together. Order something."

"No, thank you," he told her. "Can we just do this?"

She sighed and motioned for the bartender. "What do you drink, Franklin?" she asked.

He sighed. "Whiskey. On the rocks," he finally said.

Once it was poured, he drank it quickly. He hadn't wanted it, but now that it was in his hands he recognized that it might help steel his nerves.

"What do you think you know, Rosalind?" he asked.

"I know that Wilson Fisk is a very guilty man. The more my team of investigators and colleagues began to look into his case, the more we turned up that made us uncomfortable continuing on with it," she said. "We prefer cases we actually have a shot at winning."

"I hope that whatever you found you intend to turn over to the prosecutor, since to not do so would be unethical and disgusting," he told her angrily.

"Of course!" Rosalind said, "Whatever you might think of me personally, Franklin, I hope that you know that I take my professional obligations very seriously. Although in this case, you might have a good reason to not want me to take _everything_ to the prosecutor."

"What does that mean?" Foggy asked, dread sitting in the pit of his stomach.

Rosalind pushed the folder over to him. "Why don't you see for yourself?" she asked.

He opened the folder slowly, fingers trembling, knowing that inside he would find photos of Daredevil using Matt's roof access, or evidence of Matt's fingerprints on a crime scene.

He wasn't expecting to see photos of Karen.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Security footage taken from outside of your secretary Ms. Page's building on the night of May 15th," Rosalind told her. "From the ATM across the street."

It was grainy and in night vision, but it was definitely Karen walking up to her apartment. He moved the photo to inspect the one underneath. It showed a man approaching Karen from behind. The photo after that showed the man dragging Karen into a black car. What was this?

"I don't understand," Foggy said.

"Keep looking," Rosalind said.

The fourth photo wasn't at Karen's apartment anymore. It was in a warehouse. It was a body covered in blood.

"James Wesley," Rosalind said. "Shot several times at close range in the chest. He was Mr. Fisk's loyal assistant of many years. I believe you met him. He hired you to take on Mr. Healy's case on behalf of Confederated Global, one of Mr. Fisk's holdings."

"So what? So he's dead. And Karen was kidnapped? I'm not seeing the connection here," Foggy said.

"Mr. Fisk insisted to us that Mr. Wesley was murdered by the man in the mask. He wanted it looked into, believed it would be a good way for us to implicate the mysterious man and prove him to be a threat. As it turns out, though, it wasn't the Devil who killed him."

The next photo was security footage from what Foggy assumed to be outside of the warehouse. It showed Karen exiting.

"Mr. Fisk's men attempted to use their influence to investigate, but they missed that there was a security camera mounted in a nearby parking lot by it's owners because the attendant there had been held up several times. He doesn't know that this footage exists. Or about the footage from Ms. Page's building," Rosalind told him.

"She didn't kill him," Foggy said, not believing what he was seeing.

"The bullets in Mr. Wesley match those of the handguns issued to Fisk's bodyguards. The murder weapon was missing from the scene. She was the only other person there," Rosalind said.

"It still could have been Daredevil," Foggy said, hating himself for both bringing up that possibility and wanting it to actually be true instead of what was being presented to him.

"It doesn't fit his M.O. Believe me, we have been looking into him. Not very successfully. The man's a shadow. But as far as we can tell, he doesn't use guns, and he doesn't kill. Ms. Page, on the other hand, has a very colorful history. Go ahead. Keep looking."

The stack of photos and files under Foggy's fingers was thick. He didn't want to think about what else might be there. "No," he said. "I don't want to know." Rosalind simply nodded, closed the folder and moved it back towards herself.

"It was self-defense," Rosalind said. "But she'll still be arrested. Fisk will still want revenge, and even from within the prison it wouldn't be impossible for him to attempt it," Rosalind told him. "It's too bad that I have to turn it in, since to not do so would be, in your words, disgusting."

She put the folder into her briefcase, and stood up to leave.

"Wait," Foggy said, knowing that she was fully expecting him to stop her. She turned around.

"I'm listening," she said.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"You know what I want," she told him.

"Me. You want me to come and work for you," he said.

"That's part of it," she said.

"Part of it?" he asked.

Rosalind sighed. "I don't know why you don't believe me. Why you're making this so much harder on yourself than it has to be Franklin. I want to be your mother again. And I want you to stop fooling around and be the person who I always knew you could be. To be my son."

"And if I said yes? What then?" he wanted to know.

"Then we move forward. And we keep the past," she said, gesturing to her briefcase, "in the past. Where it belongs."

He stared at her for a long moment, contemplating the situation. He pictured Karen back in his apartment, in his bed, and the way that he and Matt had made a promise to her to always protect her. Matt had meant it a different way at the time, knowing that he was Daredevil. But Foggy felt obligated too, even if the methods available to him to do it were different.

He thought about their office, how proud he had been to erect the sign and how much he had come to love the terrible taste of Karen's coffee. The dying plant sitting in one corner that they all joked required an actual adult around to take care of it properly. He thought about the only two people in the universe who made him feel whole and human, like the person he had worked so hard to become was real.

Was that person real though? What if Rosalind was right? What if he was fooling himself?

He nodded.

Rosalind smiled and ordered them another round of drinks.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a Tumblr, which can be found [here.](http://enthusiasmgirl.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, I am currently running the Daredevil Minor Character Fic Fest, which is committed to promoting more stories about the minor characters in the Daredevil universe. Check it out [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/DD_Minor_Character_Ficfest/profile)


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